IO> I looked all over the Linux Documentation Project website for this IO> information. I couldn't seem to find it anywhere so I was hoping someone IO> could help me with it on this list. IO> I'll explain my situation. IO> I have two hard drives installed on my computer. IO> hda is dedicated to Windoze. IO> hdc is dedicated to Linux. IO> When I install Linux (I've gone through the process a few times) it has me IO> choose between LILO and GRUB. I have chosen LILO since I've read more about IO> it than GRUB and I have a better understand of how it works. IO> After installing and booting up, I get the choice of booting Linux-Secure, IO> Linux, Linux Failsafe, or Windoze. Everything works fine like it should. IO> When I installed I tried both the normal boot and also the nicer looking IO> boot (the equivalent of "vga=791" in the config. file), they both worked fine. IO> The trouble comes afterwards. IO> I edited my /etc/lilo.conf file, saved it, and then typed "lilo" into the IO> shell. IO> It returned a confirmation that the file was edited properly. IO> When I restarted my computer the BIOS went through its normal checks and IO> when it got to the "OS Loading..." part the screen starts filling with "01 IO> 00 01 00 01 00 01 00 01" etc. Either a geometry mismatch or a "0x80 0x81" stuff trouble. IO> I understood that this meant my MBR was corrupted, so I did a fdisk /mbr IO> from my DOS bootdisk. This allowed me to get into Windoze normally and I IO> could of course get into Linux using my Linux bootdisk. I restored the IO> /etc/lilo.conf file to its original condition and typed "lilo" once more. IO> When I restarted my computer the next time I got the same 1s and 0s. Nope this does not happen when mbr is corrupted. It is an error message of lilo actually. Until here I can say that there is a geometry mismatch or a "bios hard disk boot priority" problem. IO> Considering that I took much care into editing the /etc/lilo.conf file IO> originally, this leads me to believe that it wasn't the result of a typo in IO> the file. Dont think so IO> What it does lead me to believe is that the installation process writes to IO> the MBR differently than LILO does from Linux. No they dont. But meanwhile something might have changed, that should be defined in lilo.conf IO> I'm not sure if that's the IO> case though. It's also possible that I'm doing something wrong somehow that IO> I don't realize. Most probably. But sometimes some stuff needs to deep info. IO> Is it possible that hda isn't being mounted properly IO> before it's being written to? No need to mount it. Lilo deals with physichal sectors. IO> Does the fact that the drive is used for IO> Windoze make a difference in this case? Is there something else I'm IO> overlooking here? IO> I'd appreciate any help that anyone can offer to fix this problem. I'd like IO> to be able to boot into Linux without a floppy disk again and be able to IO> use LILO properly. IO> Ivan. I can help you, I had gone too much deep into lilo. Here we have - Geometry mismatch. There may be some trouble with lilo, when it is trying to define your hard drives geometry. I dont know your lilo / MDK version, but with assumptions, there must be a "lba32" line in your /etc/lilo.conf, so lilo will be able to access your disk that is larger than 8GB. - 0x80 0x81 stuff I said. This is deep. I had written a long mail once for this, in this list, but could not "somehow" find it in the archives. The thing is, When you boot your system, bios gives names to your devices. IDE devices (hard disks, cdroms etc) are given names 0x80, 0x81, etc. 80 is hda, 81 hdb (if exists). Unfortunately, MS products always assume they are 0x80. When a device is booted, bios assigns it a 0x80, does not matter if it is hda or hdc, so this confuses logic, this confuses lilo. What may affect you, did you chage your boot sequence from your bios? Did you have a previously installed cdrom at hdb, then removed (or vice versa) ? These are what I can think of now. If you give me more info, (how is your boot sequence defined in your bios, what are your hd~ devices, and their sizes, /etc/lilo.conf) I can help you about this. Onur Kucuk _________________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Get your free @yahoo.com address at http://mail.yahoo.com
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