On Fri, Mar 17, 2000 at 12:56:28PM +0000, David Wright was only escaped alone to tell thee:
> The BIOS needs to be able to read from the boot device without any > assistance from linux. If you're getting 2FA, then that task is done. > Now lilo needs to read the kernel from the partition where it has been > told it is. I think that's what's failing. It's easy to make mistakes with fdisk your first time: I, for some reason, decided at installation that my linux swap partition needed to be bootable. <shrug> > What worked for *me* in this instance was putting linear in lilo.conf > and changing boot=/dev/hda2 to boot=/dev/hda . This puts lilo in the > master boot record of the disk instead of the boot sector of the > 2nd partition. (You'll be using sd, not hd, and maybe a different > partition number.) I know the aha-2940 writes its own BIOS into my PC's memory if no IDE drives are installed. This makes installation of OS/2 (don't laugh, this was a while ago...), and Linux and presumably all non-crippleware OS's MUCH easier, as my BIOS does not have to support IDE's st1506 (? did I remember that aright?) legacy; allowing me <attitude type=smug> to boot from my 2nd HD's second logical partition. </attitude> Go into fdisk and use the 'p' command on your drives and WRITE this info down. When primary, logical and extended partitions mix the numbering scheme gets confusing and non-obvious FAST--easy to make a mistake like mine above. (Not that I'm being defensive :) Below is a paste of my partitions on sda and sdb, .7 and 8.5 gig drives, showing how the numbering skips to 5 when you start making only logical partitions. I don't know if the DPT card does this BIOS repair. Even with IDE-compatible HD addressing the 'linear' lilo.conf option may not be necessary as long as the boot partition is below cyl. 1024. You asked if the disk has an MBR, THE master boot record of partitions for the whole disk, as opposed to mbr's, each partitions' layout data. Each drive always does, unless corrupted. To boot into lilo, it must go there: on a SCSI system it would be boot=/dev/sda. NO number means it points to the MBR; "sda1" is the first partition which has AN mbr, but not THE drive MBR--that is at "sda"; see my lilo.conf below. ----lilo.conf---- boot=/dev/sda root=/dev/sdb6 install=/boot/boot.b map=/boot/map compact vga=normal prompt timeout=100 verbose=3 read-only image=/vmlinuz label=linux image=/boot/vmlinuz-2.0.36 label=old other=/dev/sda1 label=dos table=/dev/sda ----disk partitions---- Disk /dev/sda: 64 heads, 32 sectors, 699 cylinders Units = cylinders of 2048 * 512 bytes Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System /dev/sda1 * 1 629 644080 b Win95 FAT32 /dev/sda2 630 699 71680 5 Extended /dev/sda5 630 699 71664 82 Linux swap /dev/sdb1 1 1105 8875881 5 Extended /dev/sdb5 1 38 305172 c Win95 FAT32 (LBA) /dev/sdb6 * 39 357 2562336 83 Linux native /dev/sdb7 358 612 2048256 83 Linux native /dev/sdb8 613 931 2562336 83 Linux native /dev/sdb9 932 1007 610438+ 83 Linux native /dev/sdb10 1008 1105 787153+ 83 Linux native -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] || http://www.concentric.net/~bedlam Though nothing is wasted, everything is spent. -- Annie Dillard But to live outside the law you must be honest.... -- Bob Dylan