Very Computer

I've got an old P75 box that i'm trying to install SuSE 6.2 on (got the
disk with an old copy of learn Linux in 24 hours book).  The box has a
850 MB hd primary (win95, Fat 16) with a 3.5 GB slave (partitioned as
follows:  2 GB Linux Primary, 145 MB linux swap, 1.3 GB dos).  I tried
installing SuSE and seriously hosed the computer with a bad LILO install
(got the dreaded L 101010101... message).  after completely resetting
the computer, i tried again, this time bypassing LILO (once burned,
twice shy).  Everything seemed to load ok.

I'm very reluctant to set up LILO again and am looking for alternatives
for starting Linux.  I found info on Loadlin and am considering that (is
there a performance hit for running Loadlin once Win95 is running?).
I'm able to boot to Linux using the floppy, but am not sure how much the
system, once booted, is relying on the boot floppy (thereby slowing the
system down).  i've not looked at GRUB, but am shy about touching the
MBR again (that's not to say that i wouldn't try it if it's the best
way).  is there any other method that i don't know about?

Any opinions would be most appreciated.

Dean P

You probably have an old BIOS which cannot access the slave. A P75 is
likely to have one. I got this on a P133 when I tried to do something
similar and that was the cause.

Quote:> I'm very reluctant to set up LILO again and am looking for alternatives
> for starting Linux.  I found info on Loadlin and am considering that (is
> there a performance hit for running Loadlin once Win95 is running?).
> I'm able to boot to Linux using the floppy, but am not sure how much the
> system, once booted, is relying on the boot floppy (thereby slowing the
> system down).  i've not looked at GRUB, but am shy about touching the
> MBR again (that's not to say that i wouldn't try it if it's the best
> way).  is there any other method that i don't know about?

If you can shrink the Windows partition on the master by about 20MB you
can put a small /boot partition on there, which will enable LILO to
boot. The rest of Linux can go on the slave, the BIOS only needs to be
able to access the second stage boot loader and kernel which are in
/boot.

Booting via either loadlin or a floppy is not going to cause any
performance problem once the boot process is complete. Both will make
booting a bit slower (especially the floppy). In both cases you are just
loading the kernel into memory, and once it's loaded it's there for the
duration. If you boot off floppy, you can remove it once the system has
started, thus proving it doesn't access it. IBM actually ship some PCs
which boot into PC-DOS, run loadlin and switch to Linux. I don't know
why, but they work fine.

I would be reluctant to rely on booting off floppy, as floppies are
notoriously prone to degrading with time. If you do continue with this,
ensure that you have more than one.

BTW on a PC with Windows, you can repair a broken MBR by booting a
DOS/Windows rescue floppy and "fdisk /mbr". This puts the standard
minimal DOS bootloader which just boots from the "active" partition on
the first hard disk back. There is no need to reinstall everything after
a LILO disaster.

Regards, Ian

Actually, it was just a thoroughly botched install of Lilo.  Trying to
follow the book's instructions and adapting it for my situation just
didn't work.  I couldn't figure out how to get the partitions right, and
when i realized i had made a mistake, the installer didn't allow me to
go back and correct it.  I ended up having to run  fdisk \mbr on the C:,
but not after i tried just about everything else.  my reluctance for
trying to reinstall Lilo stems mostly from the installer.  i just didn't
understand what it was asking for.

Quote:

> Booting via either loadlin or a floppy is not going to cause any
> performance problem once the boot process is complete. Both will make
> booting a bit slower (especially the floppy). In both cases you are just
> loading the kernel into memory, and once it's loaded it's there for the
> duration. If you boot off floppy, you can remove it once the system has
> started, thus proving it doesn't access it. IBM actually ship some PCs
> which boot into PC-DOS, run loadlin and switch to Linux. I don't know
> why, but they work fine.

I tried setting up Loadlin last night and ran into an obvious newbie
problem... i couldn't find the kernel.  All the documentation said to
look in the /usr/src directory for the vmlinuz ( or vlinuz) file.  well,
i didn't see anything even remotely similar to that.  Is there a way to
query the system for the name of the kernel?

Quote:> I would be reluctant to rely on booting off floppy, as floppies are
> notoriously prone to degrading with time. If you do continue with this,
> ensure that you have more than one.

Agreed...  relying on a boot floppy for non-emergency situations is
courting disaster.

Quote:

> Regards, Ian

Thanks...

Dean