On Fri, Oct 15, 1999 at 04:28:28PM -0400, Robert Findlay wrote:
> The problem is that unless we get identical C/H/S values for the two hard
> drives we are bothered by having to reset the BIOS parameters for each swap.
-snip-
> think I'm coming to an answer. I recently came across the lilo.conf
> "append" parameter which in conjunction with the "hd=" bootparam should be
> able to do the trick. The problem is that without the correct BIOS C/H/S
> values my machines never seem to get anywhere near lilo.
>
I'd take a hard look at the cylinder/head/sector parameters to lilo. Note
that they're documented in the lilo user.tex file and NOT in the man page.
They're also documented in the main lilo README file. There's a nice
example of the correct usage in section 6 of the LILO mini-howto:
http://www.linuxdoc.org/HOWTO/mini/LILO.html
You might also need the "linear" or "fix-table" options to lilo.conf.
The reason I'm mentioning all this LILO stuff when it doesn't seem to be
your problem is that if I remember correctly only a small part of lilo is
located in the boot sector and that part needs to have some idea of the
disk geometry in order for lilo to finish loading and for a kernel image
to be located on the disk and loaded to RAM.
I _thought_ that the MBR of a hard disk is always at block zero, so if
that's true, no matter _what_ your BIOS thinks the CHS values are it
should be able to load part of LILO, which *if it has a functioning map of
the drive layout* should be able to boot the system. I'm kind of tossing
out a theory here- I'm sure somebody will point out if I'm wrong.
Does your system have a functioning console at bootloader load time? Can
you see LILO printing out "L" or "LI" or something like that? If you see
at least the "L" that means the lilo boot sector got loaded, and you can
quit worrying about the BIOS and focus on LILO itself.
You might also want to consider other bootloaders if it turns out that
lilo is the one at fault. I found syslinux to be much happier loading
from my (buggy, embedded) BIOS.
Good Luck,
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