There is something weird with Debian's partition boot setup.
Hi,
Since you can't get your system to the root prompt I suppose this won't help you much,
but I to have encountered problems with how Debian sets up itself to boot from a
partition during an install. I have encountered this problem with both my 1.3 install
from long ago and my recent hamm install. Basically, during the Debian install when I
am asked to set up Debian to boot from the hard disk, I answer yes to the questions
that ask if I want to make the partition Debian is installed on bootable and if I want
the partition active, and I answer no to the MBR installation because I use a boot
manager (System Commander). After rebooting Debian fails to boot directly from hard
disk, and System Commander reports that the partition boot record appears corrupted.
Using the boot disk works though and once in Debian if I type 'liloconfig' and then
proceed to make the EXACT same selections that I made during the initial Debian
install and then reboot, it works perfectly. I did not have this problem with Red Hat
either. I guess this is a bug with Debian.
For what it's worth,
Chris
Mike Harmon wrote:
> Hi Everyone,
>
> I am a Debian newbie. Actually I'm ALMOST a Linux newbie.
>
> My system environment is as follows:
>
> IBM Mod 365 200 MHz Pentium Pro system (32 MB RAM)
> HD 0 is a 2.5 GB IDE (NT 4.0 loaded)
> HD1 is a 540 MB IDE (Linux)
> Network Card is an IBM Auto 16/4 Token Ring ISA card
>
> I'm using BOOTPART to allow my NT boot manager to boot Linux
>
> Here are my questions/problems:
>
> 1. After I installed the base disks and went through the config steps, I got to
> the point where I was asked whether I wanted to set up Linux to boot from the
> HD. I said 'yes'. I received an error message telling me that it was
> impossible to boot from the second HD, even though it used to work fine with
> Red Hat 4.2. I was expecting the config program to ask me whether I wanted to
> use the MBR or place the boot sector on the first track of the Linux boot
> partition, but it didn't.
>
> 2. When I tried to reboot the system (by selecting my 'Linux' choice from the
> NT boot menu), I got the following screen:
>
> Disk formatted with WinImage 2.20 (c) 1993-95 Gilles Vollant.
> Bootsector from C. H. Hochstatter.
>
> No Systemdisk. Booting from harddisk.
> Cannot load from harddisk.
> Insert Systemdisk and press any key.
>
> 3. I inserted my rescue disk and pressed <enter>. At the boot: prompt, I
> entered: rescue root=/dev/hdb1
>
> 4. The system responded with:
>
> Loading linux . . .
>
> and proceeded with the boot process.
>
> After the normal two dozen or so boot messages, I got to the following point
> in the boot process:
>
> Checking all file systems . . .
> Parallelizing fsck version 1.10 (24-Apr-97)
> /dev/hdb5: clean, 11/16632 files, 2129/66496 blocks
> /dev/hdb6: clean, 2333/92520 files, 22425/368641 blocks
> Mounting local file systems . . .
> /dev/hdb5 on /home type ext2 (rw)
> /dev/hdb6 on /usr type ext2 (rw)
>
> and then my system froze up tight.
>
> I suspect that the boot freezeup is some kind of difugilty with the Token Ring
> card (I never did get it to work with Red Hat 4.2). A few lines earlier on the
> boot process, I got messages indicating that the tr0 device was found, but I
> never received any message indicating that the adapter had been opened
> successfully. I'd really like to get the TR support to work, because that's
> what we use here at work, and I'd like to be able to use Linux to connect to
> the LAN. I know I have all the IP stuff set up correctly, because I had our
> telecomm guru on the line while I was filling in the blanks.
>
> Can anyone shed some light on my somewhat dimly-lit world regarding these two
> issues.
>
> All help will be greatly rewarded with virtual beer.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Mike Harmon
>
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