Can't boot mandrake [solved]

[oldnoob]

I have installed mandrake 10.1 on a second hard drive on my pc. All appears to go quite well until i reboot. As the machine is booting, it comes up with an error: L 01 01 01 etc..., which is apparently a LILO error (disk error possibly). I have to use cd 1 to restore windows loader. I try installing LILO on floppy instead of mbr and get error: Fatal:filesystem would be destroyed by lilo boot sector: /dev/fd0. So i try putting grub image on floppy and boot from that. More errors, grub loads i select linux: error 17 cant mount selected partition, i edit to (hd0,1), same error, i change to (hd1,0) or (hd1,1): selected disc does not exist. I try hdb or hdb0 or hdb1: error 23: error while parsing number.

 

I have tried installing about a dozen times trying various partition options, but always to no avail. I must be missing something very simple. This is roughly how i am trying to install:

 

1st drive: 80gig NTFS with M$ XP SP1

110gig NTFS for music & games

 

2nd drive 5gig ext3 /

100mb ext3 /boot

1.6 gig swap

7 gig ext3 /usr

5gig ext3 /var

22gig ext3 /home

 

I think i should be making a fat32 partition to swap data between the os's, when i finally get mandrake running (any advise on how i should configure 2nd 40 gig drive would be appreciated)

All i want to do is boot mandrake!!!, from floppy if necessary but duel boot would be fantastic.

 

Any help anyone can give will be much appreciated. and please be patient as i am very new to linux (havn't been able to use it yet).

 

Specs are: amd athlon xp 1700

k7s5a mainboard

256 ram

200gig WD

40gig Seagate

64 nvidia gf2

pioneer 107 dvd burner

 

THANKS IN ADVANCE

[AussieJohn]

I think your problem is that the MBR (Master Boot Record) is corrupted so it won't matter what you do with bootloaders at the moment. Lilo was most likely guilty of doing this in the first place.

 

You need to clear the MBR first. This will immediately restore your direct access into Windows first.

 

When you have done this, insert your No.1 Mandrake CD and do a "pretend upgrade" till you get to the setting up part and this time select GRUB.

 

You should be OK now.

 

 

Cheers. John.

 

 

The more I think about it, I think your problem is in the BIOS. I think you need to change the Hard Drives from Auto selection to Manual and then select LBA. You also should set Plug & Play to OFF, or No

Edited April 3, 2005 by AussieJohn

[AussieJohn]

Reading your setup for the 2nd. HDD that you have Mandrake on, I would suggest that there is NO worthwhile reason to have seperate partitions for /boot or /usr or /var.

When doing an INSTALL OR Reinstall, the data in these partitions is going to mostly be replaced anyway.

Your swap file does not need to be as big as 1.6Gb. It only needs to be about twice your actual ram size, in your case approx 500Mb.

 

I suggest you use the /usr partition as your /home account partition, if it only has one account. (If you have a number of users then merge the /usr and /var partitions and make that /home)

 

If you keep a lot of music and graphics then store them in the 20Gb partition and name it Media or a name of your choice.

 

You definately need to make a fat32 partition on the Windows hard drive for swapping data.

NTSF does not handle nicely with Linux.

[oldnoob]

Thanks for the quick reply AussieJohn

 

When you say "pretend upgrade", i assume you mean upgrade instead of install at the prompt, and if that is so mandrake installer took me straight to the end of the installer, up to "Reboot" so i didnt get the option of grub.

 

Then theres the bios; primary drive says 137gig ( like it always has ) and LBA is on.

BUT primary slave says nothing, eg all blank, like the the bios cant see the slave drive

( which it used to before trying to install mandrake) , must be something in this, mandrake installer can see drive but bios cant after linux install, m$ disk manager, for the same drive, has no volume label but apart from that, knows that the disk has basic healthy "unknown partitions"

 

And as for the partioning, Thank You for the advice i thought there was too many partitions

[AussieJohn]

Hello OLDNOOB.

 

Since you have the second HDD as primary slave, I would move it to secomdary Master. Best practice suggests HDDs on different IDE channels rather than on the same channel. Makes for faster movement of data between the HDDs

 

Look very carefully at the setting on the rear of that second HDD in particular and make certain it has been set for SLAVE if you leave the HDD in its present position, or that it is correctly set to MASTER if you move it to the secondary IDE channel.

 

Do not use cable select if that is what you are presently doing. It causes more problems than it is worth.

 

Assuming the Hard drive itself is not faulty then the above is most likely the case.

 

If you do have it set up correctly then I feel your hard drive has failed and will need to be replaced ( under warrenty, hopefully)

 

Best of luck. John

[oldnoob]

Thank You SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO much aussiejohn

 

I jumpered 1st drive to master 2nd drive to slave (was using cable select)

went into bios, selected detect all drives, up pops second drive,

did yet another install, and here i am using mozilla on mandrake for the first time

 

You are an OZZIE LEGEND!!!

 

now to go and discover

 

problem solvered

 

regards pete

[adamw]

BTW, standard practice for drives / channels -

 

If you've got two drives, make them primary master and secondary master.

 

Two hard drives and two optical drives, make the hard drives master / slave on primary channel, optical drives master / slave on secondary channel.

 

Any combination of three drives, opinions differ :). Basically, if you're using two devices on one channel at once, performance on both will be only as good as the slowest of the two. So if you have a CD drive and a hard disk on the same channel and you're doing something with the CD drive, the performance of the hard disk will be heavily crippled.

[AussieJohn]

The BIOS sets up the operational parameters for EACH drive on an IDE channel and not some lowest common denominator parameter for all drives on a channel.

A cdrom drive DOES NOT degrade the efficient operation of a HDD on the same channel.

 

2 HDDs spend a lot of their time talking to oneanother and this cannot be done as efficiently if they are using the same electronic paths.

Cdrom drives are only active when a cd is inserted and the rest of the time they sit there doing nothing.

 

Everything I have ever read or been taught as an electronics tech from way back (52yrs) has guided me to the conclusion that advice I have read by other qualified and trained computer electronics technicians (not programmers), that the putting of the 2 HDDs as Primary Master and Secondary Master, is the best practice.

 

John.

[adamw]

Well, the last time I read up on the issue was a long time ago, so I'll defer to AussieJohn on this one - go with his advice.