On Fri, May 13, 2005 at 11:13:35AM -0400, Thomas Chadwick wrote: > I have kind of a unique situation, and googling for help hasn't really > turned up anything that's applicable, so I'm turning to the mailing list > for some help. Here's the run-down: > > Installed Debian (Woody stable) on a fairly old computer. I wanted to use > a huge (120GB) harddrive, but the BIOS doesn't support huge IDE drives, so > I did the following: > > Installed Windows 98 on a 545MB HDD (Master on the Primary IDE Channel, aka > /dev/hda1). > Installed Debian on a 120GB HDD (Master on the Secondary IDE Channel, aka > /dev/hdc1). > Used loadlin to boot into Debian Linux. > > This has worked great for me. I simply told the BIOS there was only 1 HDD > installed (the 545MB one), and it happily booted into Windows, which then > happily ran loadlin, which happily booted Debian. The kernel, which talks > to the IDE controller directly, had no trouble finding, mounting, and using > /dev/hdc1. > > However, I recently upgraded the MOBO, and since the BIOS on the new MOBO > supports huge IDE drives, I'd like to get rid of the funky boot process > described above, and boot directly into Linux using LILO. > > From everything I read, the boot device does not have to be /dev/hda, so I > figured I'd leave the 120GB HDD at /dev/hdc (and uninstall the 545MB drive > altogether). So... I created the following /etc/lilo.conf > > boot=/dev/hdc > root=/dev/hdc1 > lba32 > vga=normal > delay=100 > image=/vmlinuz > initrd=/initrd.img > read-only > > I ran lilo, which didn't have anything interesting to say other than the > fact that /dev/hdc is not the 1st harddrive. > > I also ran "lilo -A /dev/hdc 1" to mark the 1st partition, /dev/hdc1, as > bootable. > > Finally, I shutdown the machine, unplugged the 5454MB harddrive, powered > up, and, instead of booting into Debian, I get: > > L01 01 01 01 01 01 [ad nauseum] > > Any clue what I did wrong? One possibility is that after removing the little hard drive your BIOS causes /dev/hdc to be identified as /dev/hda. To test this, remove the little drive again, boot with a floppy[1] or LiveCD[2] and see if you can mount /dev/hda1. If so, you should be able to chroot to the mount directory, edit lilo.conf to use hda and then reinstall lilo. You'll want to edit /etc/fstab as well. [1] I recommend http://paud.sourceforge.net/ for a bootable floppy. [2] I don't think a Woody installation CD will work for this, but I may well be wrong. -- PJR :-)
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