Re: Can't boot from hard disk--solved
My booting problem has been solved. In case anyone else has a similar
problem, here is what was wrong, how I fixed things, and what I would
do differently if I were to start over again.
To recap, the problem was that after installing slink, I could boot
from the boot floppy, but not from the hard disk. When trying to boot
from the hard disk, the system would hang just after the "Loading
Linux................" message.
The source of the problem is that slink uses, by default, a kernel
stored as a "bzimage." A perusal of the mailing list archives and
other Debian documentation shows that this format is known to be
problematic for certain machines. The case that is sited most often
is the IBM Tecra laptop, so the problem is often referred to as the
"tecra problem." Since I wasn't installing on a laptop of any kind, I
initially didn't pay much attention to the discussions of the tecra
problem. Later, as I got more desperate, I read it more carefully and
decided that since my system was hanging up at the stage where the
kernel is being uncompressed, this _was_ the likely source of the
problem.
To solve the problem, I booted from the floppy, ungzipped and
untarred the kernel source directory, configured the kernel, and
remade the kernel as a "zimage" rather than a bzimage. After
reinstalling the newly-made kernel and modules in the appropriate
places (and rerunning lilo just to be sure), the system booted
perfectly from the hard drive. Two days of frustration eliminated!
Two more things that might be of interest:
There is a tecra-specific version of slink that comes on its own
cdrom. Before recompiling the kernel, I tried to install the tecra
version on a second hard disk, but it wouldn't install. The software
couldn't find the kernel image file on the cd, even though it was
right where it was supposed to be. I'll have to file a bug report on
that.
After I got things working, I went into the BIOS to change the boot
order back to "C,A" and saw an interesting setting that allows me to
change the behavior of the A20 gate. The default for my machine is to
have this setting at "Fast," but it can be changed to "Normal." Since
the tecra problem has something to do with the A20 gate, I suspect
that if I had changed this setting to "Normal" before installing,
everything would have been fine. As I now have a working system, I
have no desire to test this theory; but if I were to reinstall from
scratch again, the first thing I would do is change this setting.
--
Mark Lawrence
lawrence@unified-eng.com
Reply to: