Re[2]: still not booting

[CHAUMARAT Gilles]

 

 First, I'll answer my own 
question:  
  (And how many kinds of incompatible partition table are 
there?)  
  The answer is quite a lot. See check_partition() in
 linux/drivers/block/genhd.c for a list of the ones that Linux 
can 
 understand.
 
 I managed to convert my previous partition table (I don't know what
 type it was) to a Sun partition table while preserving the ext2 
file
 system in /dev/sda2; /dev/sda1 got trashed, but that was only swap,
 fortunately. In general you can't always convert a partition table 
from
 one type to another because the different types have different rules
 about where a partition may begin. And there are all sorts of 
problems 
 with changing geometries ...
 
You can't have swap as the first partition on the disk.  The boot loader 
and the swap overwrite each other

You should not put anything on the first cylinder of your disk. My swap 
partition begins at the 2nd one.
 

Re: still not booting

[Steve Dunham]

Edmund GRIMLEY EVANS [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:

 First, I'll answer my own question:
 
  (And how many kinds of incompatible partition table are there?)
 
 The answer is quite a lot. See check_partition() in
 linux/drivers/block/genhd.c for a list of the ones that Linux can
 understand.

 I managed to convert my previous partition table (I don't know what
 type it was) to a Sun partition table while preserving the ext2 file
 system in /dev/sda2; /dev/sda1 got trashed, but that was only swap,
 fortunately. In general you can't always convert a partition table from
 one type to another because the different types have different rules
 about where a partition may begin. And there are all sorts of problems
 with changing geometries ...

You can't have swap as the first partition on the disk.  The boot
loader and the swap overwrite each other.


Steve
[EMAIL PROTECTED]

Re: still not booting

[Eric Delaunay]

Steve Dunham wrote:
 Edmund GRIMLEY EVANS [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
 
  First, I'll answer my own question:
  
   (And how many kinds of incompatible partition table are there?)
  
  The answer is quite a lot. See check_partition() in
  linux/drivers/block/genhd.c for a list of the ones that Linux can
  understand.
 
  I managed to convert my previous partition table (I don't know what
  type it was) to a Sun partition table while preserving the ext2 file
  system in /dev/sda2; /dev/sda1 got trashed, but that was only swap,
  fortunately. In general you can't always convert a partition table from
  one type to another because the different types have different rules
  about where a partition may begin. And there are all sorts of problems
  with changing geometries ...
 
 You can't have swap as the first partition on the disk.  The boot
 loader and the swap overwrite each other.

Or you should have the swap partition starting at cylinder 1, not 0 if I
remember a doc I read 2 years ago.
An ext2 partition does not use the first sector even if starting at cylinder
0, therfore leaving the partition table untouched.  It's not the case for swap
partition.

Regards.

-- 
 Eric Delaunay | La guerre justifie l'existence des militaires.
 [EMAIL PROTECTED] | En les supprimant. Henri Jeanson (1900-1970)

Re: still not booting

[edmundo]

 You can't have swap as the first partition on the disk.  The boot
 loader and the swap overwrite each other.

My first partition starts at 1, rather than 0, because fdisk warned me
about that problem. But I can't boot even if I run swapoff before
running silo before shutdown -h and attempted reboot ...

Edmund


(But I don't understand how the first partition being ext2fs would be
any better. Does an ext2 file system not use the first sectors? When I
ran mkfs.ext2 on a file it zeroed the first few sectors ...)