Re: Disk Corruption: SOLVED

[Jonathan Brandmeyer <jbrandmeyer@earthlink.net>]

And permanantly broken.

A detailed read of /usr/share/doc/lilo/Manual.txt reveales this telling
entry:
--quote--
Two disks, Linux on second disk, first disk has no extended partition
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

If there is neither a Linux partition nor an extended partition on the 
first disk, then there's only one place left, where a LILO boot sector 
could be stored: the master boot record.

In this configuration, LILO is responsible for booting all other
operating 
systems too.

                 FIRST DISK                     SECOND DISK
        +--------------------------+    +--------------------------+
    --> | MBR            /dev/hda  |    | MBR            /dev/hdb  |
        | +------------------------|    | +------------------------|
        | | MS-DOS       /dev/hda1 |    | | Linux        /dev/hdb1 |
        | |------------------------|    | |------------------------|
        | | ...          /dev/hda2 |    | | ...          /dev/hdb2 |
        +--------------------------+    +--------------------------+

You should back up your old MBR before installing LILO and verify that
LILO 
is able to boot your other operating system(s) before relying on this 
approach.

The line boot = /dev/hda2 in /etc/lilo.conf would have to be changed to 
boot = /dev/hda in this example.
--endquote--

A detailed explination of the workings of BR's and MBR's precedes this
information and the reasons for it.

I now believe that during the initial installation, LILO was installed
on the MBR of /dev/hda.  When I repartitioned the hard drive, it
invalidated the information in the boot loader, causing undefined
behavior.  If hda had another partition, LILO could have been installed
on that partition, with the provision that it must be marked active. 
There is only one partition on hda, and no way to safely shrink it to
make room for another.  My only option was to set boot=/dev/hda and to
overwrite the invalid MBR.

Lesson learned: You MUST have at least one partition available for Linux
on the FIRST HDD to preserve the ability to cleanly reverse the Linux
install.  LILO can never be removed from my system without reinstalling
the original OS.  
Of course, if I had the forthought to B/U my original MBR, I could have
maintained the ability to restore it.

On the other hand, Linux is like clipless pedals on mountain bikes, once
you go Linux, you'll never go back!

Thanks for the help,
Jonathan.

P.S:  I did find boot-menu.b, don't know why I couldn't before.  Also,
"prompt" is the right keyword to get the menu.  Don't know why that
didn't initially work either.