From: Kalle Olavi Niemitalo <tosi@ees2.oulu.fi>
To: Shane McDonald <mcdshane@sedsystems.ca>
CC: debian-hurd@lists.debian.org
Subject: Re: Installation problems with GRUB
Date: 18 Jun 1999 11:54:35 +0300
Shane McDonald <mcdshane@SEDSystems.ca> writes:
> GRUB reported the error:
>
> Filesystem type unknown, partition type 0x55
Linux shows "[EZD]" in front of the partition information when it
boots, doesn't it?
Partition type 0x55 is used by a driver which hooks the BIOS disk
interrupt and translates disk geometry so that DOS can use the
entire disk. The driver keeps your partitions inside the 0x55
partition. Linux detects the situation and uses them from there.
Apparently Linux also fools fdisk into reading and writing the
virtual MBR inside the 0x55 partition.
It seems GRUB doesn't understand the driver's partitioning
scheme. As the disk doesn't contain anything important yet, you
could erase its MBR and get rid of the driver. But since fdisk
is seeing the virtual MBR, I don't think dd from Linux would get
to the real one either.
Perhaps you could use the DOS fdisk to delete the 0x55 partition.
But if the driver is on hda too, it gets loaded before DOS and
hides itself. In that case, boot from a floppy.
Some of those drivers offer to boot from a floppy if you press
Ctrl during boot. Don't use this feature -- the driver would
get in memory. Tweak the BIOS settings instead.