Re: Unable to boot from hard drive

[ajlewis2@intac.com]

In linux.debian.user, you wrote:
> Yes, i ran /sbin/lilo after changing lilo.conf and it prints the
> message that Linux was added, the master boot record was written.  In
> particular, the settings i tried playing with were the lba32/linear
> options, and adding the hard drive geometry to the file.  None of that
> made any difference (no system disk error, lilo not loaded at all).
> 
> Here's what i have now (i believe it's the default lilo.conf that debian
> sets up directly from the installation), minus comments:
> 
> lba32
> boot=/dev/hda
> root=/dev/hda3
> 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
> 
> 
> And here's the result of fdisk -l /dev/hda:
> 
> Disk /dev/hda: 255 heads, 63 sectors, 4865 cylinders
> Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 bytes
> 
>    Device Boot    Start       End    Blocks   Id  System
> /dev/hda1   *         1         1      8001   83  Linux
> /dev/hda2             2        32    249007+  82  Linux swap
> /dev/hda3            33      4865  38821072+  83  Linux
> 
> 
> As i said in my first email, /boot is on /dev/hda1, which is marked
> bootable and is at the beginning of the drive.
> 
> Thanks in advance for any help or insight :)
> 
> -- 
>    \  /  Mike Miller   \   fudu00@netscape.net

I have /dev/hda1 bootable too, but it is my Windows partition.  I do not
have my /boot flagged bootable and it is on another drive.  I don't know
what that information is worth.  I would think that having /boot flagged
would be fine.  

The manual says this:
(<nothing>)  No part of LILO has been loaded. LILO either isn't installed
    or the partition on which its boot sector is located isn't active

I don't know what it means by that except that it sounds like it would
be important if you were putting LILO in a partition and not in the mbr.  I
have the line boot=/dev/hda as the first line.  That may be important.  

I'm curious what would happen if you tried installing lilo on a floppy.  I
know it's not a solution, but it would be additional information.  You can
do this by changing the top line to boot=/dev/fd0 and put a floppy in the
drive and run /sbin/lilo.  Then see if it will boot from that.  If that
works, then it at least shows you that this problem has to do with where
LILO is getting installed.  Maybe you could just install it on /dev/hda1
instead of the mbr.

Anita