The original LM 7.0 CD had a problem if you booted from it and tried to
repartition your hard drive. It could damage partitions and make them
unreadable. Not quite erasing your drive, but close enough. From the LM site:
February 4 2000 - Diskdrake problem (installation disks & DrakXtools package)
A severe problem occurs with Diskdrake when resizing certain FAT partitions.
Please upgrade to
drakxtools-1.0-44mdk.i586.rpm if you want to resize FAT partition.
For a new install, a new ISO image mandrake70-2.iso is available for download.
Other mirrors here.
For those who use the former ISO image we build new install floppy disk that
fixes the problem (cdrom.img, network.img,
hd.img, pmcia.img)
These images are incompatible with the new ISO image. Additionnaly this
new installation floppy/Iso fix several bugs:
Mylex DAC 960 hardware RAID handling
auto-configuration bug for Matrox G100 (and some other very seldom used)
a few mis-autoconfiguration fix (tulip NIC)
one more kind of GeForce video card autodetected
My boxed LM 7.0 came with the new boot floppy and a note to not boot from the
CD because of this problem. If you are not sure you have the right boot
floppy, I'd download the new one from one of the mirrors like:
ftp://ftp.linux.tucows.com/pub/distributions/Mandrake/Mandrake/updates/7.00/images/cdrom.img
You'll have to read the doc on creating the boot floppy form the .img file.
- Ralph
On Sun, 25 Jun 2000, John Gist wrote:
> Getting ready to do my first ever Linux install. I have the 7.0 boxed
> set. My CD drive is bootable. The computer has Windows on a 6.4 gig
> hard drive that is all one partition. I want to keep Windows and set up
> dual boot with Linux. In a book on Linux/Mandrake I purchased at the
> book store is a statement that sounds as if booting from the CD will
> erase the drive. If this is true I will use a floppy instead.
>
> Thanks
> John
