Vincent Voois wrote:
Hmmm..... First I had WinMe then using Mandrake9.1 I was able to repartiton the HDD for dual booting. Having got 9.1 settled I had to make a choice, dump WinMe and use the space for Linux storage or start again with another HDD. I still needed windows for autocad at the very least so went with another HDD. I used Mandrake 9.2 to install then partition some of the partitions you see on hda today, and I included a FAT partition for file sharing. NB here that I had simply relegated the windows HDD to slave without doing any configuring of anything. I had great problems when I tried to update to Mandrake 10.... it never really took, so I back-up'ed and went for the clean install. Using the installation tools I further split up hda and though everything works fine my first confusion started with the number of partitions now available to me. My understanding was a max of 4 primary with one being further split to 4 logical, a total of 7 usable partition less one for swap. My table shows that, but it is frustrating when the tools mentioned earlier suggested I could have more. Now, when I tried to go the update route with Mandrake10, lilo showed me boot options for partitions that had no OS on them, ie the FAT partitions. Yet when I did a clean install I didn't strike this problem????? I am missing something here because all the info and help I see out there suggests that I should have seen the same problem even with a clean install.
SnapafunFrank wrote:
OK. You are teaching me something here but I haven't quite nailed it yet.
Re partitions:]
/dev/hda1 * 1 125 1004031 83 Linux /dev/hda2 126 2937 22587390 85 Linux extended /dev/hda3 2938 4434 12024652+ 83 Linux /dev/hda4 4435 4870 3502170 6 FAT16 /dev/hda5 126 250 1004031 83 Linux /dev/hda6 251 1496 10008463+ 83 Linux /dev/hda7 1497 1559 506016 82 Linux swap /dev/hda8 1560 2805 10008463+ 83 Linux /dev/hda9 2806 2937 1060258+ 83 Linux
and:
/dev/hdb1 * 1 1827 14675346 c W95 FAT32 (LBA) /dev/hdb2 1828 1829 16065 83 Linux /dev/hdb3 1830 2491 5317515 f W95 Ext'd (LBA) /dev/hdb5 1830 1841 96358+ 83 Linux /dev/hdb6 1842 1853 96358+ 83 Linux /dev/hdb7 1854 2263 3293293+ 83 Linux /dev/hdb8 2264 2295 257008+ 82 Linux swap /dev/hdb9 2296 2491 1574338+ 83 Linux
Now I'm lost with the "non-FAT' statement. As you can see I have FAT on both HDDs so your reply suggested that I needed to configure things? I do recall that when attempting to update to Mandrake 10 that lilo thought that my FAT partitions were windows OS's but I didn't see this when I went ahead with a clean install. I have fought hard with this partition problem for some time and feel that I might be missing something real simple, so forgive me for persevering. Right now everything runs fine in this regard but the next time I go to update or try something different I can see me getting balder.
Your FAT16 on your HDA4 seems to me in the middle of your Linux partitions, not that this should matter but if it is not being detected by your W95 bootpartition to me the only way it seems so is that the partition-table has some extra or missing mark to keep it undetected from Windows environment. (I can understand if this FAT16 partition was written specifically for and under Linux then this would be a security measure).
But trust me that if you would have created this /dev/hda4 FAT16 entry on the table under DOS or Windows, it would have become C: and when your w95 platform boots up from your /dev/hdb1, it gets stuck as soon as it wants to start win.com because it probably isn't even there on this c:\windows, or if it is, it may output "incorrect DOS version" or "himem not loaded" or something similar since your /dev/hdb1 will become d:.
Then there is this matter or partitions being "primary" or "extended" (and) "logical". You can't boot from a logical device, but you can place your OS there if you configure your environment variables in your boot-files where this OS is located.
As to the opening thread here, if you get strange boot options with lilo [ assuming you are using lilo of course ] then don't bother with them. Once you get things settled simply remove those 'false' entries from within /etc/lilo.conf and as root issue: #/sbin/lilo.
Keep doing this until you get no errors as lilo re-configures itself. The lilo I posted earlier is a good one so use it for some examples to get your own preferences sorted.
Note Well. Do not test lilo with a reboot until you get no errors with # /sbin/lilo
Unlike windows there is no need to reboot for things like this to work, just keep mixing things up and learning about it until a clean config. is achieved.
eg.
[EMAIL PROTECTED] frank]# /sbin/lilo
Added linux263
Added linuz263NNet
Added linux-nonfb263
Added linux267
Added failsafe263
Added failsafe267
Added windows *
Added linux-nonfb267
Added 2422-21
Added memtest-1.11
Hope some of this helps someone.........
-- Regards
SnapafunFrank
Big or small, a challenge requires the same commitment to resolve.
Registered Linux User # 324213
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