LITTLEBLACKDOG.COM

Posted: Sun Oct 22, 2000 12:03 pm Post subject:

Feel free to post any questions, comments, or feedback regarding this article. We will do our best to answer any questions you may have, and look forward to your feedback on this article!

Original Article - http://www.littlewhitedog.com/reviews_other_00011.asp
The Aftermath - http://www.littlewhitedog.com/reviews_other_00011b.asp

Stray Dog Joined: 23 Oct 2000 Posts: 5

Thanks for the very good articles.
Incidentally, I had a failed win2k install and it left the Win2k multiboot menu setup on my Win98 system. I tried "fdisk /mbr", Norton rescue disks, and Partition Magic's rescue disks. I even renamed boot.ini to boot.bak (bad move; its the same as deletitng boot.ini). No fix.
Then, a smart guy suggested I boot up with my Windows 98 Start Disk, and do a "sys c:" at the prompt. It worked. My Win98 starts up like it used to.

Stray Dog Joined: 04 Dec 2000 Posts: 1 Location: USA

I registered for the specific purpose of stroking your ego for the excellent Linux -Win2000 dualboot "how-to". I have never seen a procedure so clearly and exactly documented. Well done!

Posted: Tue Dec 05, 2000 4:53 am Post subject:

Thanks for the comments BruxBox and Egkamp. Yes the "sys c:" is a wonderful command to fix the bootsector woes one may encounter after screwing up a dual-boot. Check out the news from yesterday for a little update to dual-booting. Thanks again and come back soon!

Rover
"...She went to the cupboard to get her poor dog a bone,
when she bent over Rover took over and gave her a bone of her own!"

Stray Dog Joined: 05 Dec 2000 Posts: 4 Location: USA

Very nice article.

for some reason, I can't get it to work, though: even though I've several times tried to install lilo on /dev/hda3 (my Linux partition), all I get in the bootsect.lnx file is 512 blank spaces, and if I select Linux on boot up it fails. Where did my bootsector disappear to?

Posted: Tue Dec 05, 2000 6:24 pm Post subject:

One of the main problems is certain versions of LILO can not boot from a boot sector past the 1024 cylinder, but that should not be a problem with the newer distros. Post your lilo.conf file and we'll see if we can figure this out. As a last resort you can use LILO to boot Win2k/NT if we can't get this working.

Rover
"...She went to the cupboard to get her poor dog a bone,
when she bent over Rover took over and gave her a bone of her own!"

Stray Dog Joined: 05 Dec 2000 Posts: 4 Location: USA

thanks Rover.

That's the problem - /sbin/lilo failed because the disk is > 1024 cylinders. Duh! I didn't even think of anything like that, as I figured a new copy of Red Hat 7.0 should be able to cope with a big disk. So I guess I should go hunting for a new lilo, huh?

My lilo.conf looks like this, though:

boot = /dev/hda3
timeout = 100
linear
prompt
message = /boot/message
default = linux
vga = normal
read-only
map=/boot/map
install=/boot/boot.b
image = /boot/vmlinuz-2.2.16-22
label = linux
root = /dev/hda3
other = /dev/hda1
label = dos

If lilo is being loaded by the W2K loader I
could probably lose the DOS reference, right?

Posted: Wed Dec 06, 2000 3:24 am Post subject:

Quote:
boot = /dev/hda3
timeout = 100
linear

Why is there a "linear" option? That is used usually for SCSI. I would just remove that line. After some research I think even the newer distros have problem booting from the 1024 cylinder, but I swear I saw in a forum somewhere that said they had fixed that in newer versions of LILO. The 1024 cylinder is usually past the 2GB mark on a drive so if "hda3" is within that space it shouldn't be a problem.

Quote:
image = /boot/vmlinuz-2.2.16-22
label = linux

Also try putting a "root=/dev/hda3" line inbetween the "image" and "label" line. And the "dos" label has no effect but you could remove it to make the lilo.conf file easier to read. YOu have Win2K loaded to a FAT/FAT32 partition right? That is why RH inserted the "Dos" section you could actually boot Win2K with your current LILO setup if you installed it to "hda" if Win2K is installed to a FAT/FAT32 partition.

Rover
"...She went to the cupboard to get her poor dog a bone,
when she bent over Rover took over and gave her a bone of her own!"

Stray Dog Joined: 05 Dec 2000 Posts: 4 Location: USA

Thanks for the input. Yes, the main partition is FAT32. I tried this, with boot = /dev/hda as the first line (and I moved the root = /dev/hda3 line as you suggested). Lilo still gives the error message:

Warning: device 0x0303 exceeds 1024 cylinder limit
Fatal: geo_comp_addr: Cylinder number is too big (2317>1023)

Now, there must be a lilo somewhere that will at least write to the MBR of a big disk, right?

Posted: Wed Dec 06, 2000 11:23 am Post subject:

Well I'm pretty sure that Mandrake7.1 or 7.2 has a lilo that is capable.

Rover
"...She went to the cupboard to get her poor dog a bone,
when she bent over Rover took over and gave her a bone of her own!"

Stray Dog Joined: 06 Dec 2000 Posts: 1

I am about to do exactly what SAZ is doing, and here's what I found at
http://www.mandrakeuser.org/install/iboot3.html:

"Since version 21.4.2, LiLo supports LBA and thus booting from beyond the 1024th cylinder if you add the option lba32 to the first section of '/etc/lilo.conf'. This version is included in LM 7.1 [...]"

To Rover: thanks a bunch for the help!

Stray Dog Joined: 07 Dec 2000 Posts: 2 Location: USA

Hey, i'm doing the same thing rover here is doing and getting the same error message. I guess according to cookie monster's post that it is possible...but how do i get my hands on the newer version of lilo, and how do i go about implementing it?

Stray Dog Joined: 07 Dec 2000 Posts: 2 Location: USA

Hey, i'm doing the same thing rover here is doing and getting the same error message. I guess according to cookie monster's post that it is possible...but how do i get my hands on the newer version of lilo, and how do i go about implementing it?

Posted: Thu Dec 07, 2000 5:30 pm Post subject:

Damn CookieMonster, I had totally forgot about the LBA line. Yes that is the answer boys and girls...add a line somewhere near the top that says "lba32" no quotes of course. That will allow booting from cylinders past the 1024th. As for getting the newer version of LILO, if you have Mandrake there is a page with many of the updated versions listed. Or you could try TUCOWS Linux site. They have an extensive list of software for Linux. Hunt around I'm sure it is out there. Boot off a floppy get into Linux, install the new LILO, reconfigure the lilo.conf file, install it, extract it, setup the NT bootloader, and see if it works!

Rover
"...She went to the cupboard to get her poor dog a bone,
when she bent over Rover took over and gave her a bone of her own!"

Stray Dog Joined: 05 Dec 2000 Posts: 4 Location: USA

that's more or less the solution that worked for me in the end - I ran "/sbin/lilo -L" and that worked just fine. Thanks for all the help.