Re: The boot sector and it's backup
On Sat, 2004-06-19 at 03:07, Keith O'Connell wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I just installed sarge from scratch onto a machine here and I got a
> message during the subsequent startuo sequence that was several screens
> full of 8 digit numbers followed by the message;
>
> "there are differences between the boot sector and it's backup"
>
> It went on to load happily, but I don't get this on other machines and
> the thing was installed only half an hour prior to this.
>
> What would cause this, and what is the correct tool to deal with it?
> Better would be an indication of what I should be reading to learn about
> this.
>
> Can anybody advise?
I'm not an expert in this field, but it sounds like this message is
coming from the bootloader - lilo or grub. Is this message appearing
before any kernel boot messages?
I'm guessing that when lilo/grub installs itself it makes a copy
somewhere safe for some reason, and that either the boot sector or the
"save" sector of your hard-drive has been corrupted somehow. The
bootloader is checking that all is well on boot, and has (correctly)
determined that either the boot sector or its saved copy has changed.
>From the fact that bootup works, I suspect it is the backup that is
corrupted.
Reinstalling your bootloader might fix this; try "man lilo" or "man
grub" respectively.
Regards,
Simon
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