Re: Boot mystery

[Marshal Kar-Cheung Wong <masee@usa.net>]

Here's how my system is setup.  Hopefully, it will help.

I have Partition Magic's Boot Manager (actually, I think it's the OS/2
boot manager) on /dev/hda.  My DR-DOS and Win95 partitions are marked
a bootable on /dev/hda.  Debian GNU/Linux is on /dev/hdb.  The root
partition is /dev/hdb1.

During the installtion phase, at the very end, when it asks about LILO
and all that stuff, I tell it to not install a MBR, nor make the
partition bootable, but it just install LILO on the boot sector of the
root partition.  (I think that the sequence of answers is no, no,
yes.)

Then I just tell the Boot Manager to boot off that partition.

Another thing.  I use a old version of Partition Magic, so I can't
make ext2fs.  So I usually just clear out the partitions that I want
to use for Linux completely, and use the installation cfdisk
partitioner to make the partitions.  I find that as long as you're
only adding partitions into empty areas, it won't affect the other
partitions.  But you're on your own risk on that one.  Have Backups.

Good luck!

Marshal

>>>>> "Charlie" == Charlie Kroeger <ckrogrr@frankensteinface.com> writes:

    > Hi, got a problem...  I've installed Debian 2.1 i386 on my
    > second hard drive in a file system and a swap file I created
    > with partition magic.

    > I installed Debian by booting with a windows boot disk with a CD
    > ROM driver and then loaded Debian from the CD.  Everything went
    > well. The installation "found" my file system and created a
    > partition called /dev/hdc5.  The swap was activated and given
    > the designation: /dev/hdc6 and when it came to installing LILO,
    > I agreed to what the installation suggested: /dev/dev/hdc2

    > I was using at the time Boot Magic, from Partition Magic and
    > figured it would see LILO and no problems.  However I can only
    > boot Linux using the boot disk made during the installation.

    > I read the LILO HOWTO and tried to make "active" the LILO
    > partition using "fdisk" and also "cfdisk" but both these
    > couldn't see anything but the "default" partition which was a
    > FAT32 with Win95.  I tried Ranish Partition Mgr as it was
    > suggested on a Linux friendly site as a good tool for making
    > active, partitions, but although it saw the Linux partitions I
    > got a message that said it didn't support the Ex2 file
    > system. (is this the windows ranish version?) I went into
    > partition magic and tried to make the Ex2 file system primary or
    > active or bootable but the option wasn't available.

    > Although I can boot with the floppy and get to my present
    > installation, I'm not too confident about floppy reliability and
    > would prefer to activate the LILO partition so Boot Magic will
    > see it and I can have a choice when I turn on the computer.

    > How do I get the /dev/hdc2 partition (LILO) created during the
    > CDROM installation, to be seen and activated?  I even did an
    > installation where I selected Debian as the default operating
    > system but it was the same result, Windows booting as default.

    > I have a bios called "Mr. Bios" and it doesn't give you many
    > selections about changing bios settings, but it does recognize
    > the other hard drive.  Another thing, I installed a version of
    > Caldera 1.2 from the back of a book once, on this same drive, a
    > few months ago and everything worked fine in the sense that
    > Linux was recognized by boot magic and when I selected it as the
    > O/S to boot, boot magic went right to LILO and the boot went
    > smoothly to the #login.  Debian appeals to me for it's freedom
    > and many options, and I think the installation program (dselect)
    > is excellent.  Just a bit stumped on this boot question, I'm
    > sure it's right there in front of me.

    > Thanks,

    > C.K.

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