Linux boot woes

[XMEN Gambit]

Ok, I'm trying to get my hard drive to boot linux. Accidentally wiped by Win2K MBR last night, which is why I was late for practice. Here's the deal.<br><br>hda is my primary drive. Don't really care if Linux can see it, but it'd be nice. 60 GB IDE<br><br>hdb is dedicated to linux. I've got it in a docking-bay thingy so I can swap out the HD easily. 3.2 GB IDE, partitioned into a primary 2.7 GB partition and a .5 GB swap partition.<br><br>I set the BIOS to boot first from the second drive, so I can limit my experimentation to that drive. When I want to use win2k, I just turn off the docking bay and the system starts fine. When I use a Linux boot disk, all is well. (2.2 kernel) However, when I try to boot from the HD, LILO only gives me "LI", at which point I can CTRL-ALT-DEL. I tried using the GRUB boot loader, as well, and with it, I just get to "GRUB" and the system hangs - hard reset required.<br><br>I've poked around in the configuration of each of these loaders. Tried lba and linear options with LILO. Not much configuration of GRUB to be done other than a device map, from which I tried removing hda in case the large disk size was hosing it. Still no luck. My research online has encountered exactly one similar case, about a year ago - but no answer for it. <!--EZCODE EMOTICON START :( --><img src=http://www.ezboard.com/images/emoticons/frown.gif ALT=":("><!--EZCODE EMOTICON END--> <br><br>Anybody with Linux experience have any ideas? <p><img src=http://www.xmenclan.org/xmengambit.gif border=0 align=left>XMEN member<br>Card-carrying DTM<br>OKL Fish-napper<br><br><br>Though a program be but three lines long,<br> someday it will have to be maintained.<br> <i>- The Tao of Programming</i><br>Life is complex; it consists of real and imaginary parts.</p><i></i>

[XMEN Ashaman DTM]

Sounds like your boot sector is gone, but you knew that.<br><br>I would do one of two things:<br><br>1) Re install linux<br>2) See if there was a way to copy the boot info from your installation disks to the second harddrive. If you have your BIOS set to boot from that drive first, then the boot info should reside on that one.<br><br>Q: With LILO or GRUB could you see the Windows hd and the Linux hd?<br>I think if it's the case that you can recognize both, then either boot manager could be looking for boot information on the windows hd to boot the second. I am thinking that since I seem to remember LILO rewriting the boot sector of the drive so that you could boot from your primary or secondary hd, or two different partitions of a drive.<br><br>Did I just make sense?<br><br>I think the boot info is gone. And your first objective is to determine which drive that info was on. The next would be how to get that info back onto it if it is lost, which I am not entirely sure is possible.<br> <p><br><img src=http://www.xmenclan.org/avatars/ashaman2.jpg width=150 align=left><br><left><a href=http://www.dragontalonmercs.com>Dragon Talon Mercenary</a><br><a href=http://www.xmenclan.org>Member of the XMEN</a><br>Have a Nice Day!<br><br>"Politics, war, martial arts;<br>these are tools to bend the <br>universe to your will."</left><br><br><br><p><i>Edited by: <a href=http://pub3.ezboard.com/uxmengambit.sho ... ge=EN>XMEN Gambit</a> <img src=http://www.xmenclan.org/images/x.gif> at: 7/14/02 8:16:26 pm</i></p></p><i></i>

[XMEN Gambit]

I've rewritten the MBR, partition table, and boot sector on that drive, and I've also formatted and reinstalled. That ain't it. <!--EZCODE EMOTICON START :) --><img src=http://www.ezboard.com/images/emoticons/smile.gif ALT=":)"><!--EZCODE EMOTICON END--> The MBR has to be read for it to be printing the "LI" or "grub" messages.<br><br>Both bootloaders can see both drives during their installation; it's only when trying to boot that it dies.<br><br>But thanks anyway. Still searching... <p><img src=http://www.xmenclan.org/xmengambit.gif border=0 align=left>XMEN member<br>Card-carrying DTM<br>OKL Fish-napper<br><br><br>Though a program be but three lines long,<br> someday it will have to be maintained.<br> <i>- The Tao of Programming</i><br>Life is complex; it consists of real and imaginary parts.</p><i>Edited by: <A HREF=http://pub3.ezboard.com/uxmengambit.sho ... ge=EN>XMEN Gambit</A>&nbsp; <IMG SRC="http://www.xmenclan.org/images/x.gif" BORDER=0> at: 8/20/02 4:34:39 pm<br></i>

[XMEN Ashaman DTM]

But isn't the boot info of one drive on the other?<br><br>I could have sworn that's what LILO did with my drives...<br>just by the fact that one drive would boot (the windows one), and the other would not (mandrake). What I mean by that, is that you had to have both drives in there, in a certain order (master/slave), and set to boot off the primary. If you did not have both drives when you tried to boot from the linux drive only, it would not boot.<br><br> <p><br><img src=http://www.xmenclan.org/avatars/ashaman2.jpg width=150 align=left><br><left><a href=http://www.dragontalonmercs.com>Dragon Talon Mercenary</a><br><a href=http://www.xmenclan.org>Member of the XMEN</a><br>Have a Nice Day!<br><br>"Politics, war, martial arts;<br>these are tools to bend the <br>universe to your will."</left><br><br><br><p><i>Edited by: <a href=http://pub3.ezboard.com/uxmengambit.sho ... ge=EN>XMEN Gambit</a> <img src=http://www.xmenclan.org/images/x.gif> at: 7/14/02 8:16:26 pm</i></p></p><i>Edited by: <A HREF=http://pub3.ezboard.com/uxmenashamandtm ... ge=EN>XMEN Ashaman DTM</A>&nbsp; <IMG SRC="http://www.nickandsarah.com/xmen.gif" BORDER=0> at: 8/20/02 4:45:33 pm<br></i>

[XMEN Gambit]

Doesn't have to be that way. Usually it is, because of BIOS limitations. This BIOS, like many newer ones, allows me to boot off of darn near any device the silly thing will detect, and if there's not enough options to set it the way you want it in BIOS there's a boot-time BIOS-level menu that lets you choose then. <br><br>I think it's really really cool. <!--EZCODE EMOTICON START :D --><img src=http://www.ezboard.com/images/emoticons/happy.gif ALT=":D"><!--EZCODE EMOTICON END--> <br><br>Incidentally, that's what LILO tried to do to me last night, which is why my Win2k MBR got overwritten and I was late to practice while fixing it. But you can specify that it write itself to any device. <p><img src=http://www.xmenclan.org/xmengambit.gif border=0 align=left>XMEN member<br>Card-carrying DTM<br>OKL Fish-napper<br><br><br>Though a program be but three lines long,<br> someday it will have to be maintained.<br> <i>- The Tao of Programming</i><br>Life is complex; it consists of real and imaginary parts.</p><i></i>

[scratchmonkey1]

I use Grub now, although I still have LILO on my office server. Grub can be used to create a boot floppy and you can debug that before letting it touch your MBR. (I'm paranoid that way. <!--EZCODE EMOTICON START :D --><img src=http://www.ezboard.com/images/emoticons/happy.gif ALT=":D"><!--EZCODE EMOTICON END--> )<br><br>Set up Grub completely on the boot floppy, and edit the text file menu there (grub.conf) to control the boot sequence. You can create a menu that allows you to boot either Win2k or Linux (which distribution?).<br><br>Try to leave the BIOS alone during experimenting. Keep the drive order consistent so that you don't have another variable to deal with. Grub should see the Linux drive as hd1, and Linux will see it as hdb. Grub has a command line, so you can get it working interactively, taking notes on what works, and then write your config file based on your notes.<br><br>Here's an article that really helped me get my head around how Grub works:<br><br><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK START--><a href="http://www.linuxjournal.com/article.php ... <!--EZCODE AUTOLINK END--><br><br>Since I don't get back to this forum frequently, you can email me at ScratchMonkey@SewingWitch.com or find me in IRC at irc.dynamix.com #MA with any questions.<br><br>I'm planning on adding an ATAPI drive to a SCSI-only system shortly and that's likely to foul up the BIOS boot order, so I'll get to revisit this myself shortly. <!--EZCODE EMOTICON START ;) --><img src=http://www.ezboard.com/images/emoticons/wink.gif ALT=";)"><!--EZCODE EMOTICON END--> <p></p><i></i>

[XMEN Gambit]

I got around it by using a Grub boot floppy. Problem is that the same setup for the floppy won't work on the HD. Dunno why. But I really just wanted to be able to load the kernel off the HD and since I've got that, I'll stop worrying about it for now. <p><img src=http://www.xmenclan.org/xmengambit.gif border=0 align=left>XMEN member<br>Card-carrying DTM<br>OKL Fish-napper<br><br><br>Though a program be but three lines long,<br> someday it will have to be maintained.<br> <i>- The Tao of Programming</i><br>Life is complex; it consists of real and imaginary parts.</p><i></i>

[scratchmonkey1]

My guess is that the first stage of Grub (in the MBR) is failing to find the second stage (in the Linux boot partition). Any number of reasons why that might happen. The 1st stage uses BIOS calls to find the 2nd stage, so the 2nd has to be in the first 1024 cylinders, etc. <p></p><i></i>