bigjohn Posted June 14, 2004 Report Share Posted June 14, 2004 My mandrake 10 official install offers me linux linux non-fb 263-7 failsafe windows floppy on booting. Now I follow that linux non-fb is non frame buffer (text start up), and failsafe, windows and floppy. But what's the difference between linux and 263-7? The both seem to start up the same, they both seem to start the same services, I installed the system with the 2.6.3-7 kernel (and didn't select LSB at the package selection point so there shouldn't be anything 2.4 related), So what's the difference? regards John p.s. This install is the first one that I've had my hard drive configured with /boot, /swap, /root and /home partitions - I don't suppose anyone know's if it's got anything to do with that ?? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tyme Posted June 14, 2004 Report Share Posted June 14, 2004 check in /etc/lilo.conf and see if there is a difference between the "linux" entry and the "263-7" entry. specifically, check the appends and what kernel it points to in /boot I would guess there isn't really any difference, and that you can just remove one either by deleting the entry from lilo.conf or by removing it via MCC Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bigjohn Posted June 14, 2004 Author Report Share Posted June 14, 2004 Well, below is the edited extract of my lilo.conf showing both of the entries:- image=/boot/vmlinuz label="linux" root=/dev/hda5 initrd=/boot/initrd.img append="devfs=mount acpi=ht resume=/dev/hda3 splash=silent" vga=788 read-only image=/boot/vmlinuz-2.6.3-7mdk label="263-7" root=/dev/hda5 initrd=/boot/initrd-2.6.3-7mdk.img append="devfs=mount acpi=ht resume=/dev/hda3 splash=silent" read-only and as you can see, the only difference is the initrd. There's 2 confusing thing's, that the initrd's appear to be different, but they seem to do the same thing, and also in the append line, I can't work out what the "resume=/dev/hda3" bit is, because I can't work out what the resume bit does, or why it should be pointing to my /dev/hda3, which is my swap partition? I've looked at the lilo mini howto, but that doesn't elaborate. regards John Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
spinynorman Posted June 14, 2004 Report Share Posted June 14, 2004 The two sets of entries may well be the same. /boot/vmlinuz is a symbolic link, probably to /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.3-7mdk; and /boot/initrd.img a link to /boot/initrd-2.6.3-7mdk.img. If you do 'file /boot/vmlinuz' in a terminal, you'll see the link. When you update the kernel, a new entry similar to 263-7 is created for the new kernel, and the symbolic links then point to the new files. It is useful to keep the 263-7 entry in case you have problems with the new kernel. When you update the kernel a second time, you will have 2 old versions, so you may want to delete the earlier one. Hope that's clear. :) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ixthusdan Posted June 14, 2004 Report Share Posted June 14, 2004 It's a left-over from when Mandrake was offering two different kernels in 10CE. They just didn't change the setup in the installer. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bvc Posted June 15, 2004 Report Share Posted June 15, 2004 file /boot/vmlinuz file /boot/initrd will tell you what they point to. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bcre8iv Posted June 15, 2004 Report Share Posted June 15, 2004 Ok, so this explains what I was about to ask except for one thing: What is linux-smp? I have: linux-smp linux linux-nonfb 263-7 failsafe windows floppy Default is linux-smp, and I tried once to boot "linux" and it hung halfway through the boot sequence. The boot up definately looked different, but as it didn't finish I don't know what else is different. Thanks, Eric Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Steve Scrimpshire Posted June 15, 2004 Report Share Posted June 15, 2004 linux-smp is booting the SMP kernel (Symmetric Multi-Processors). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bcre8iv Posted June 15, 2004 Report Share Posted June 15, 2004 oh. I rebooted and tried the "linux" option again, and it worked like a charm. It seems to be running a bit faster even. Thanks! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bigjohn Posted June 15, 2004 Author Report Share Posted June 15, 2004 Well, I just tried to see where the files/links point to and got this bash-2.05b$ file /boot/vmlinuz /boot/vmlinuz: cannot open (/boot/vmlinuz) bash-2.05b$ file /boot/initrd /boot/initrd: cannot open (/boot/initrd) bash-2.05b$ su Password: [root@johnspc john]# file /boot/vmlinuz /boot/vmlinuz: cannot open (/boot/vmlinuz) [root@johnspc john]# file /boot/initrd /boot/initrd: cannot open (/boot/initrd) [root@johnspc john]# As you can see, my system won't let me see where or what the links go to. Whats the likelyhood that this is to do with having a separate /boot partition ? because with gentoo, it would not let you access the boot partition for "safety reason's" i.e. you had to mount it first, but I've no way of telling whether mandrake uses this technique. If I look at my /etc/fstab I get this /dev/hda5 / reiserfs notail 0 0 # NOTE: If your BOOT partition is ReiserFS, add the notail option to opts. /dev/hda2 /boot ext3 noauto 1 1 none /dev/pts devpts mode=0620 0 0 /dev/hda6 /home reiserfs notail 0 0 /dev/hdb /mnt/cdrom auto umask=0,user,iocharset=iso8859-15,codepage=850,noauto,ro,exec 0 0 /dev/hdc /mnt/cdrom2 auto umask=0,user,iocharset=iso8859-15,codepage=850,noauto,ro,exec 0 0 none /mnt/floppy supermount dev=/dev/fd0,fs=ext2:vfat,--,umask=0,iocharset=iso8859-15,sync,codepage=850 0 0 /dev/hda1 /mnt/windows ntfs umask=0,nls=iso8859-15,ro 0 0 none /proc proc defaults 0 0 /dev/hda3 swap swap sw 0 0 Now I can see that my boot partition has the "noauto" option, but at the moment, I haven't managed to find anywhere that explain's the differing boot options (when I had gentoo installed - before I screwed it up irrepairably, I had the options "noauto, noatime" but again, no way of decyphering them). Hence does anyone know the decrypt of these terms or have a link so I can read up myself (or even know whether these/this option means that I have to mount the partition before I can do anything with it?) regards John Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tyme Posted June 15, 2004 Report Share Posted June 15, 2004 noauto means don't automatically mount. you'll want to do: mount /boot to mount it, and then check the links. man fstab has a short explanation of the options: Common for all types of file system are the options ``noauto'' (do not mount when "mount -a" is given, e.g., at boot time), ``user'' (allow a user to mount), and ``owner'' (allow device owner to mount), and ``_netdev'' (device requires network to be available). The ``owner'' and ``_netdev'' options are Linux-specific. For more details, see mount(8). there are even more options explained in man mount however some of them aren't to be used in fstab. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.