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Lilo Issue... cannot start comp


Sherpa
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GRUB is just a boot loader, so it won't set up your drive.

When you partition a draive, you do not have to affect existing partitions. I have installed as many as 4 os's at one time, and increased and decreased my partitions according to need. The secret is whatever is inside of a particular partition will be destroyed when you change that partition. Information in other partitions is not affected. ( This is computers. Unexpected things can happen. Back-up yer data!)

 

If you choose to reinstall Mandrake, the partition tool under expert mode will give you the flexibility to alter your drive. But, you need to know the lay-out before proceeding. /etc/fstab contains this information, as do certain windows programs. The Linux stuff is clearer to read because of the odd naming conventions in windows.

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oh and, i dont know if bvc already answered this, but i guess that GRUB does not do stuff like this?

what stuff? Screw your sys? Nope, never has for me. Lilo has though....what are we up to now?....oh, about 6-8 times? People clain that lilo is fine. It may be for them. I realize I've installed way more than the average user but that just means their time will come sooner or later with lilo. I prefer to use a bootloader that has a perfect track record with me and is the default for the big distros now, with mandrake being the exception ;) If that is not what you meant, sorry.

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I think that with the software we're throwing at him, he was not sure what might setup partitions or alter partitions on the drive. At least, that's what I thought he meant! :unsure:

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no i understand now, there are three main partitions on my drive when i do a linux auto format, the Swap space, the Root partition and the /home partition. i realize the problem that occured. when i first received this error, i issued the command ( after mounting the harddrive under the rescue menu) (then i did chroot /mnt) so i was working with my harddrive at a command prompt. then i issued the command

lilo /dev/hda5

which i know know is my root partition. instead of saying

lilo /dev/hda

or even just

lilo

which would have addressed the drive as a whole, and not just an individual partition, that is why i think mandy did not find the root partition, because i erased a track line (on the harddrive) by installing lilo over it on that partition so it looks like i am going to have to reformat and reinstall mandrake.... im still a little noobie, but i am still reading the RED HAT LINUX 9 BIBLE by Chris Negus, and i just skiped to the section on boot loaders and partitons.... i wish there was a MANDY 10 Bible though.... :)

Edited by Sherpa
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i guess my main question now is for bvc;

 

with my hardware configuration i now have my:

 

1) 80GB IDE drive set up as the master (via the jumper settings on the

drive) (This drive is my linux drive) (there is a 32GB FAT32 partition on this drive that i made in windows this is used to share files btw windows and linux)

 

2) 250 GB IDE storage drive set up as the slave on the same IDE cable as my linux drive (this is the storage drive therefore it is not bootable i.e. it has no operating system installed on it)

 

3) i have a built in IDE Promise raid device on my motherboard; i have a raid0 array setup between 2 80GB harddrives (this hardware array is my windows drive, it boots only to windows and has no other operating systems installed on it)

 

4) Given this information; one can conclude that the way that i switch between booting operating systems, i change the boot order in my BIOS settings

 

!!!!) Now; when i reinstall Mandrake on my 80GB ide drive, i will install grub as the default boot loader for that drive (is this posible from setup?)

 

???) So my question is (finally) if i do change the boot order (to boot to windows) after install mandy 10 oe will this mess up the MBR and/or GRUB (via changing a system setting and not rebooting GRUB (as is the case with LILO, it does not like it apparently))?????

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i guess my main question now is for bvc;

 

???) So my question is (finally) if i do change the boot order (to boot to windows) after install mandy 10 oe will this mess up the MBR and/or GRUB (via changing a system setting and not rebooting GRUB (as is the case with LILO, it does not like it apparently))?????

From my experience with grub.....no.....no, no, no, it will not flake out on you. If the same thing happens with grub you can be sure that something else is causing it.

 

The way to get grub at install is to do an expert install. Boot cd1>F1 at the splash screen>type expert and hit Enter.

 

During the install just before, or is it after, the disk partitioning portion you'll see a popup that says 'preparing....installing bootloader. In the past, IMO, the correct interpretation of that was 'checking for partitions' .....or something but once when I installed 10-CE even though I chose grub in the last Summary screen, lilo was installed to the mbr :devil: . I mean, how stupid would it be to install the bl to the mbr then give you the option not to, and have to uninstall the bl, restore the mbr, and install the bl where chosen....BUT, I wouldn't put it past mdk-devel to do such a thing.

 

The last screen of the Install is the Summary screen. I suggest the first thing you configure here is the bootloader!!!! The Summary screen can be very bugging depending on hardware and the other stuff can be fixed later, but a bootloader screw up by the installer will render your OS's useless, as we have seen, time and time again.

 

As for the current problem....can you boot a livecd? and view mandrakes /etc/fstab and /etc/lilo.conf and post it?

Edited by bvc
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ok, ill try to, i am almost positive i can get those files, but it will take me some time to copy all of it down b/c i cant do a copy and paste ill have to right it all down and then type it all in, (i have so many devices, that is why lilo.conf is so long; dont know if fstab is long though but ill try to get that posted soon, i am still doing a bunch of music importing and organizing in Winblows, but as soo as i am done with that, i will post that stuff...

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lilo was installed to the mbr  . I mean, how stupid would it be to install the bl to the mbr then give you the option not to, and have to uninstall the bl, restore the mbr, and install the bl where chosen....BUT, I wouldn't put it past mdk-devel to do such a thing.

 

seriously!!! anyway why cant mandrake use GRUB as default, Red Hat does......

Edited by Sherpa
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Hi Sherpa I hope you figured out your problem OK.

Is GRUB working Ok for you?

I did notice that Mandrake used GRUB on the beta releases of 10, but then went with LILO in CE and Official??

As bvc said,

.... People clain that lilo is fine....

I never had any problems with LILO other than what I've 'stuffed up' myself, but as we have similar system setup I'd recommend you install your GRUB or LILO onto a floppy and boot into Linux that way (if you can?)

I have a 160G ide linux etc drive and a SATA raid0 winXP array.

I'm not going to attempt to install Linux to SATA (raid) until it becomes easier to understand, it was hard enough on winXP!

But installing GRUB/LILO to floppy means, you set your box to boot to floppy first then SATA raid, if floppy is in.... it boots to linux. If no floppy.... she boots to Win. Easy.

No messing with BIOS.

(You may have to back up this floppy to another floppy, and write protect it and tape it to the ceiling so that a 4year old can't get his grubby hands ..................)

Of course there could be some reason you can't set up like this, and I haven't taken this into account.

Also, I noticed that you have about 45Gig or so for mdk10, you don't need this much space for any one distro. So I'd recommend you redistribute this into smaller (5-6)G partitions and start installing other distros, then try messing with LILO and GRUB :cheesy:

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ya, i should, i had red hat 9 for a while, yes, i really like your idea, can it be done? it would make things a lot easier, and if i did chop that partition up for the other distros that i would install, would i tell it not to install a boot loader since there would already be one one the drive from my mandrake install?

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