Re: system reboots before booting

[Kent West <westk@acu.edu>]

Emma Jane Hogbin wrote:

> Kent West said:
>  
>
> > Emma Jane Hogbin wrote:
> >    
> >
> > > David Fokkema said:
> > >      
> > >
> > > > Just some desperate and incoherent thoughts...
> > > >       - Are you able to boot from cd or floppy and specify
> > > >         root=/dev/hda1 in lilo?
> > > >        
> > > It's already set to that.
> > >
> > >      
> > You probably want it to be "root=/dev/hda" before you chroot and run lilo.
> >    
>
> erm why? My root partition is /dev/hda1 not /dev/hda -- this config file
> worked for over two months before i shutdown the computer last night. i'm
> pretty sure the values in it are correct.

Oops, my bad; I mis-read it as "boot=/dev/hda1 in lilo?", and then 
without thinking wrote "root=/dev/hda". You're right; you've got it set 
properly as is. It's your "boot=" line that needs to be "boot=/dev/hda", 
as the boot device is the Master Boot Record (mbr), which can be thought 
of as a separate partition at the start of the disk that's not listed by 
tools like cfdisk.

> > I'm wondering if you might not have some physical damage in the boot
> > sector of your drive. That's not real likely, but it's a possibility.
> >    
>
> If that is the case what do I do? I've already checked for bad blocks on
> /dev/hda1 using e2fsck. It said something about 1% not being continuous
> but didn't want to to fix anything when I ran it using the "fix me"
> parameter.
>
>  
If your boot sector is physically damaged, there's nothing you can do 
about it except to replace the drive or boot off some other medium (such 
as a boot floppy). But as I mentioned above, that's not real likely 
(unless it's a six year old drive; I think drives tended to "park" their 
heads at the boot sector when shutting down, and various events could 
cause the head to do a crash landing during the parking stage).

I don't know if it'll help or not, but you can "man install-mbr" for 
another way of installing a Master Boot Record, but I don't understand 
the program, so use at your own risk/understanding.

Is your /boot directory readable when you boot off the rescue CD? It 
needs to be readable in the earliest stages of booting.

David made a good suggestion:

> Insert the cd/floppy, and run
> linux root=/dev/hda1 from the lilo command line. IIRC, you mentioned
> that you booted your rescue thing and then _later_ mounted /dev/hda1.
> I'm curious what happens if you try to boot from /dev/hda1 directly
> using your rescue kernel.


--
Kent




--
Kent West (westk@acu.edu)