Re: disk partitions (part 3) ... :D
Hi Helmut;
I am not really much of an expert in this sort of problem but would like
to see if I can help you to have a little better understanding of what
is going on with your system (as best as I understand anyway)...
The ROM portion of DOS loads and executes the mbr, including accessing
the disk drive for the mbr code. Thus for your system to boot, it is
necessary for the ROM code to be able to find the files needed by lilo
(the files in /boot).
The was 'created' as a 'normal' disk and not a 'lba' disk. The ROM code
then has to use the 'normal' mode to find the files needed by lilo. If
you change the mode to 'lba' then when the ROM code interprets the disk
structure information to produce the block numbers that should be used
by the drive to seek to the requested files, the resulting numbers are
NOT the blocks where the files are actually located.
As far as I know the DOS portition of this problem IS not solvable by
any practical method other than reformating the disk under DOS with the
mode set to LBA. It is actually possible to hand edit the disk
structure information used by the DOS based ROM code and I am told that
there are people that have done this but it is anything but a trivial
task!
IF you do not need to have DOS access to this drive (that would include
Win95 and OS2) you MIGHT be able to do a 'work around'. First I don't
KNOW that this will work and can't quite tell from your posting if you
already have indication that it will not...
IF the ROM code can load and execute the mbr with the CMOS mode set to
LBA then I think that this will work otherwise it is just a waste of
your time and effort. My suggestion is:
Set the CMOS to LBA for the drive (this BTW is something that I CAN NOT
do on my own system -- if a drive on my system was formatted in normal
mode then a change to LBA in the CMOS is automatically changed back).
Boot your system using a Linux boot floppy (rescue/installation) if you
don't have something else.
Run lilo (note that if you boot Linux such that your hard disk is NOT
the root filesystem (such as is the case with using the
rescue/installation disk) then it is necessary to tell lilo where the
normal root partition is currently mounted (see the lilo HOWTO or man
page) with something like "lilo -r /target" (assuming of course that you
mounted your normal hard disk Linux root filesystem on the rescue disk's
ram filesystem on the directory named 'target').
Now AGAIN, I have no idea whether this will work or not. For this to
work it is necessary that 1) the ROM code actually will access the disk
when there is a mode mismatch and 2) that lilo _uses_ that code to
determine what the location of the files that are needed during boot
WILL be.
I was just going to send this to you privately but I believe that it is
better to subject this to critical review of those that know the lilo
code as well as the details of exactly how the disk information is used
and interpreted by the ROM code.
--
best,
-bill
bleach@BellSouth.net b.leach@Worldnet.att.net
b.leach@usa.net LinuxPC@Hotmail.com
from a 1996 Micro$loth ad campaign:
"The less you know about computers the more you want Micro$oft!"
See! They do get some things right!
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