Re: Unable to boot from hard drive

[ajlewis2@intac.com]

In linux.debian.user, you wrote:
> Hi, i have a problem booting from my hard drive after installation.
> 
> I've installed the stable release on a clean hard drive, no problems
> with installation.  If i boot from a floppy or a cd, the filesystem is
> intact on the hard drive partitions.  The hard drive is a large one,
> but the BIOS autodetects the size and geometry fine.
> 
> I have no problem with reinstalling and trying again; i've already
> reinstalled four or five times, tried different partitioning schemes.
> Basically, here's what i've determined so far:
> 
> If i boot with no floppy or cd, i get a no system disk error message.
> The O'Reilly Running Linux book mentions this message, and suggests a
> failed or incorrect lilo installation, or no partition marked as
> bootable.  I've tried messing around with the lilo.conf, changing
> settings in there, but i still get the same message.  I've also tried
> a bunch of other boot loaders (the 'install-mbr' util from the debian
> cd, SBM from btmgr.sourceforge.net, and GRUB), and i get no results
> with those as well.  Finally, if i try to boot from a floppy, but load
> the kernel on my hard drive from the boot loader, it either can't find
> the kernel image or can't read the hard drive.
> 
> And yes, even though the bios seems to have no problem with my hard
> drive, i have a small hda1 partition for the /boot directory, which is
> marked bootable in cfdisk.
> 
> -- 
>    \  /  Mike Miller   \   fudu00@netscape.net

When you say that you messed around with lilo.conf changing settings, did
you also try doing /sbin/lilo after changing the settings?  Did you see
where the label for linux was installed when you ran it?

I think it might help to see your /etc/lilo.conf and the partition table.  I
am more familiar with how that looks from fdisk and usually just do:
fdisk -l /dev/hda >partition.table
to make the file to paste into an email.  

Thanks,
Anita