Re: 1FA:

[Nathan E Norman <finn@midco.net>]

On Fri, 20 Feb 1998, Stephen P. Ryan wrote:

: On 20 Feb, Bruce Dobrin wrote:
: > 1FA:   is what I get when I try to boot from My hard drive.  I had this 
: > problem once before and the problem mysteriously went away. It hasn't gone 
: > away yet on this box.  this disturbs me.  This is a new machine with a 
: > 9gig cheeta drive,  1st (system) partition is 500meg.  Any Ideas???
: > 
: > Thank you
: 
: That is a prompt from your BIOS, wanting to know which partition /
: drive to boot from.  You might get this from pressing a key too soon in
: the boot sequence, or from not having a proper boot sector installed.
: If you are using LILO, check to make sure that it is installed on the
: boot sector rather than in the partition.
: 
: -- 
: Stephen Ryan                   Debian GNU/Linux
: Mathematics graduate student, Dartmouth College

Well, sorta.  It's actually a prompt from a program called "mbr".  See
/usr/doc/mbr on your debian box for further info.  mbr is what the
Debian install puts in your Master Boot Record when you choose to
install a boot loader.  The next step in the install is where you can
set the Linux root partition active ... Debian by default installs LILO
in the Boot Record, rather than in the MBR.  (Boy, that's clear)

Usually, one sees the "1FA:" prompt by playing with the keyboard
somewhere between the POST and the LILO boot code.  Installing LILO in
the MBR can solve the problem, but may cause headaches with MS OSes ...
they like to overwrite the MBR whenever you reinstall.

HTH,

--
Nathan Norman
MidcoNet - 410 South Phillips Avenue - Sioux Falls, SD  57104
phone: (605) 334-4454 fax: (605) 335-1173
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