Re: 2.2: MBR install whacks my system boot
There are those who would have you believe that Paul D. Smith wrote:
> I've installed Debian on a lot of systems, and this is the first time
> it's ever done this.
>
> I'm installing 2.2 from a DOS partition on a 200MHz ppro, with 64M ram.
> It has a 3c595 Vortex 10/100 autoselect enet card, and an Adaptec
> AHA-294x Ultra SCSI card.
>
> The SCSI card has one disk (/dev/sda), which is a Seagate ST32430N 2G,
> and one CDROM. There is also a floppy.
>
> That's it: no IDE disks, etc.
>
> The partition table for this system looks like this (from fdisk):
>
> /dev/sda1 1 26 208813+ 6 FAT16
> /dev/sda2 * 27 261 1887637+ 5 Extended
> /dev/sda5 27 46 160618+ 83 Linux
> /dev/sda6 47 142 771088+ 83 Linux
> /dev/sda7 143 155 104391 82 Linux swap
> /dev/sda8 156 261 851413+ 83 Linux
>
> Don't ask me why there's only one primary partition and everything else
> is in the extended partition; it was configured like this before I got
> it. It had RedHat 6.1 on there and booted fine. The previous install
> booted into Linux (/dev/sda5 is the root partition), with an optional
> boot into DOS (/dev/sda1).
>
> When I installed Debian I had it overwrite the data in all the Linux
> partitions.
>
> When it asked me about installing the MBR, I took all the defaults.
> After it installed (or tried to install) an MBR for /dev/sda, it gave me
> a screen about how the boot partition was on an extended partition, so
> it needed to install into /dev/sda2, and I again took the default (OK).
>
> Now when I boot the system it prints "MBR", then does a hard hang. I
> can't even C-A-D or use the reset button, I have to power off/on.
>
> If I hold the SHIFT key down, it prints "MBR 2AF", then does the same
> hard hang.
>
> I can boot off of my boot floppy and it comes up OK, though.
>
> What should I do? I'd hate to have to reinstall, and it used to boot OK
> so it must be possible with the above partition setup.
>
> /etc/lilo.conf says:
>
> lba32
> boot=/dev/sda2
> root=/dev/sda5
> install=/boot/boot.b
> map=/boot/map
> delay=20
> vga=normal
> default=Linux
>
> image=/vmlinuz
> label=Linux
> read-only
>
> image=/vmlinuz.old
> label=LinuxOLD
> read-only
> optional
>
> Help!
>
I'd bet that there is only one primary partition because that is all
that DOS could use, so one primary and and an extended to fill the
rest of the disk used to be a standard configuration.
In any case, I'd set sda1 active and then set the value for root in
lilo.conf to /dev/sda and then go from there.
OTOH, I don't see any reason why you couldn't just repartition the
drive how you'd like it to be, since there is apparently nothing that
you need to save in the extended partition.
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