Re: Invalid partition table (rescue)
Chip,
I don't know what's wrong, but a typical way to deal with this is to boot
using a generic rescue (install) diskette. (Win98 doesn't understand Linux
so whatever it may report is suspect.) A Debian install floppy has to work
whether your CD will boot or not.
When presented the main install menu don't follow the normal sequence, but
choose instead to mount your existing swap and ext2 partitions. The first
warning that proceeding may lose data on your disk can be ignored, but don't
choose to install Linux to a particular partition or then you will lose your
data there. Pick partition disk to proceed into cfdisk to check that things
are as you want there. You will probably want to quit cfdisk without any
changes. Mount your partitions. Then select from the install menu that you
want to make Linux bootable and follow the normal sequence for installing
LILO. With any luck you are on your way.
Total time to put things right is about five minutes, if you have a rescue
diskette. It may take longer if you have to create the diskette from the CD.
To do that you will need a machine that will boot to MS-DOS or Linux. Extra
difficulty if you must boot a win98 box into MS-DOS with no real mode CD-ROM
drivers. Copy the boot directory off the CD onto a FAT16 partition in
Windows first if you have to go that route.
Cheers,
Robin
----- Original Message -----
From: "Fu-Dong Chiou" <chioufd@sas.upenn.edu>
To: <debian-user@lists.debian.org>
Cc: "Fu-Dong Chiou" <chioufd@sas.upenn.edu>
Sent: Friday, February 16, 2001 4:07 PM
Subject: Invalid partition table?
> Hi,
>
> I am having a problem booting to a Compaq LTE5200 laptop. It has
> been runnning linux for almost two years until yesterday when I decided
> to try to upgrade it using a bootable CD. Since it did not seem to boot
> from the CD, I thought I might make it happen by modifying /etc/lilo.conf.
>
> Here's what I have
>
> /dev/hda1 400+M ext2 /opt
> /dev/hda2 1.6+G Extented
> /dev/hda5 80M swap
> /dev/hda6 1.6+G ext2 / *bootdisk
>
> /dev/hda1 used to have Windows98, but was reformatted to accommondate more
> linux applications, and is not bootable. (This was done more than one
> month ago.) But /etc/lilo.conf still has this windows information up
> until yesterday, so I thought I'd modify it and try to add /dev/hdb
> and see if that makes CDROM a bootable device.
>
> After reboot, the first message displays reads
>
> 120 MHz Pentium Processor
> External Cache: 256K Enabled
> Invalid partition table
>
> I tried to boot from a rootless diskette (floppy module and CDROM module
> share the same drive bay), and run lilo from there, but there an error
> message returning that said:
>
> # lilo -C /mnt/etc/lilo.conf -b /dev/hda6 -i /mnt/boot.boot.b
>
> Ignoring entry 'root'
> Ignoring entry 'install'
> First boot sector doesn't have a valid LILO signature
>
> The /etc/lilo.conf looks like this:
>
> boot = /dev/hda
> compact
> timeout = 1
> prompt
> vga = normal
> read-only
> map = /boot/map
> install = /boot/boot.p
> image = /boot/vmlinuz
> lable = linux
> root = /dev/hda6
>
> I am at my wit's end. As far as I can tell, everything looks fine.
> Mounting /dev/hda6 after booting from tomsrbt diskette shows that
> evrerything is still there. However, when I use Windows98 bootdisk to
> boot, and run fdisk from dos prompt, it shows that /dev/hda2 is not a
> bootable device, and there is no /dev/hda5 or /dev/hda6. I am not sure
> how the whole thing happened. Would appreciate any suggestion. Thanks!
>
> Best wishes,
> Chip
>
>
>
> --
> To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-request@lists.debian.org
> with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact
listmaster@lists.debian.org
>
>
Reply to: