Very Computer

by **Eric Gofort** » Sun, 31 Dec 1899 09:00:00

My old hard drive crashed. I've bought a new WD 13 Gig to replace it,
and
have installed Win98. I'd like to reinstall RH 5.2 as on my old hard
drive.

However, my BIOS doesn't support > 8 Gig HDD so I installed Western
Digital's EZ-BIOS. I assume that this "lives" in my MBR, I see a little
EZ-BIOS message at bootup, before the OS is loaded. Is there any
way that I can use LILO in my MBR as before? What alternatives do I
have? Compaq sez they don't have a BIOS upgrade for my computer
(Presario 4814 P233 MMX).

by **Paul Hambleto** » Sun, 31 Dec 1899 09:00:00

> My old hard drive crashed. I've bought a new WD 13 Gig to replace it,
> and
> have installed Win98. I'd like to reinstall RH 5.2 as on my old hard
> drive.

> However, my BIOS doesn't support > 8 Gig HDD so I installed Western
> Digital's EZ-BIOS. I assume that this "lives" in my MBR, I see a little
> EZ-BIOS message at bootup, before the OS is loaded. Is there any
> way that I can use LILO in my MBR as before? What alternatives do I
> have? Compaq sez they don't have a BIOS upgrade for my computer
> (Presario 4814 P233 MMX).

Wouldn't this depend on how you partitioned the smaller HD? Did you slave
it to the old one with success? If you've installed Linux on a partitioned
drive slaved to your vfat drive, LILO should install boot options in the
MBR. At least it did for me, and I'm a rank newby.

paulh.vcf
< 1K Download

by **Cameron L. Spitz** » Sun, 31 Dec 1899 09:00:00

>My old hard drive crashed. I've bought a new WD 13 Gig to replace it,
>and
>have installed Win98. I'd like to reinstall RH 5.2 as on my old hard
>drive.

>However, my BIOS doesn't support > 8 Gig HDD so I installed Western
>Digital's EZ-BIOS. I assume that this "lives" in my MBR, I see a little
>EZ-BIOS message at bootup, before the OS is loaded. Is there any
>way that I can use LILO in my MBR as before?

Boot the EZ-BIOS diskette. When it asks for your OS intall disk,
give it a backup copy of your RH 5.2 install disk.

Instead of hitting Enter at the LILO
boot prompt, give the cylinder/head/sector numbers generated by EZ-BIOS.
This little ditty is described in the BootPrompt-HOWTO:

LILO boot: linux append="hda=12345,255,63"

Do not let Disk Druid mess with your partition table. Run cfdisk or
fdisk yourself. Be sure they are using the same numbers EZ-BIOS
gives.

Install Linux as usual. EZ-BIOS will tell LILO what it needs to know.
Edit your /etc/lilo.conf file and add a line

hda=12345,255,63

after each image statement.

Let me know if this doesn't work, or if it's hard to get the numbers from
EZ-BIOS.

Cameron

by **Tim Clap** » Sun, 31 Dec 1899 09:00:00

> >My old hard drive crashed. I've bought a new WD 13 Gig to replace it,
> >and
> >have installed Win98. I'd like to reinstall RH 5.2 as on my old hard
> >drive.

> >However, my BIOS doesn't support > 8 Gig HDD so I installed Western
> >Digital's EZ-BIOS. I assume that this "lives" in my MBR, I see a little
> >EZ-BIOS message at bootup, before the OS is loaded. Is there any
> >way that I can use LILO in my MBR as before?

> Boot the EZ-BIOS diskette. When it asks for your OS intall disk,
> give it a backup copy of your RH 5.2 install disk.

> Instead of hitting Enter at the LILO
> boot prompt, give the cylinder/head/sector numbers generated by EZ-BIOS.
> This little ditty is described in the BootPrompt-HOWTO:

> LILO boot: linux append="hda=12345,255,63"

> Do not let Disk Druid mess with your partition table. Run cfdisk or
> fdisk yourself. Be sure they are using the same numbers EZ-BIOS
> gives.

> Install Linux as usual. EZ-BIOS will tell LILO what it needs to know.
> Edit your /etc/lilo.conf file and add a line

> hda=12345,255,63

> after each image statement.

> Let me know if this doesn't work, or if it's hard to get the numbers from
> EZ-BIOS.

This is interesting: I went for an alternative route, which works very
well although it does require some thought before repartitioning. I used
the MaxBlast software from Maxtor, although it calls itself EZ-BIOS when
it boots up.

1) Install EZ-BIOS onto MBR.

2) Make a small (16 Mb should be plenty unless you do lots of kernel
development) partition first on the disk (it must be the first primary
partition), and make it active. You can mount this as /boot so kernel
images are always below the 1024 cylinder boundary. Install lilo onto
the start of this partition (e.g. /dev/hda1)

Windows can go on the second partition and anything else can go in an
extended partition (more windows partitions, linux partitions, swap,
etc.).

When booting EZ-BIOS is loaded first, then the it boots the first active
primary partition (i.e. lilo)

The only quirks I've noticed are:

1) Windows (95 OEM 1) still doesn't realise the disk is bigger than 8Mb
- well the fdisk on the boot disk sees it the right size, but won't let
me put partitions there.

2) Linux doesn't _need_ EZ-BIOS - it can still see the whole disk anyway
(albeit with possibly different geometry)

I hope this helps,

Tim.

--
Tim Clapp St. John's College, Cambridge, CB2 1TP

Signal Processing Group, Cambridge University Dept. of Engineering

by **Cameron L. Spitz** » Sun, 31 Dec 1899 09:00:00

>1) Install EZ-BIOS onto MBR.

>2) Make a small (16 Mb should be plenty unless you do lots of kernel
>development) partition first on the disk (it must be the first primary
>partition), and make it active. You can mount this as /boot so kernel
>images are always below the 1024 cylinder boundary.

That's always a good idea. As I showed in the old mini-HOWTO, if your
boot partitions (/boot and C:) end before cylinder 1024, you don't need
EZ-BIOS or EZ-Drove or OnTrack Disk Manager. There's no need for
BIOS to see the whole drive.

Quote:>Install lilo onto
>the start of this partition (e.g. /dev/hda1)

This boot sequence is shown in the User Guide, I think.
BIOS launches EZ-BIOS which launches LILO which launches your
choice of chain.b (to Win-95/98) or Linux.

Quote:>Windows [95 OEM Service Pack 1] can go on the second partition

Which is restricted to below cylinder 1024 if you are not using
EZ-BIOS etc.

Quote:>The only quirks I've noticed are:

>1) Windows (95 OEM 1) still doesn't realise the disk is bigger than 8Mb
>- well the fdisk on the boot disk sees it the right size, but won't let
>me put partitions there.

>2) Linux doesn't _need_ EZ-BIOS - it can still see the whole disk anyway
>(albeit with possibly different geometry)

That's why I described installing Linux under EZ-BIOS's geometry.
If Linux and Microsoft don't use the same "geometry," they clobber each
other's file systems.

Cameron

by **Magnus Ehinge** » Sun, 31 Dec 1899 09:00:00

> My old hard drive crashed. I've bought a new WD 13 Gig to replace it,
> and
> have installed Win98. I'd like to reinstall RH 5.2 as on my old hard
> drive.

> However, my BIOS doesn't support > 8 Gig HDD so I installed Western
> Digital's EZ-BIOS. I assume that this "lives" in my MBR, I see a little
> EZ-BIOS message at bootup, before the OS is loaded. Is there any
> way that I can use LILO in my MBR as before? What alternatives do I
> have? Compaq sez they don't have a BIOS upgrade for my computer
> (Presario 4814 P233 MMX).

I had a similar problem some time ago. As I use both the Win95, OS/2 and
Linux operating systems (you know, "he who has the most operating systems
when he dies, wins") ;-), and they were all supposed to be on the same HD,
and my BIOS didn't accept >8GB HD, things were a bit complicated. After
successfully installing everything, I wrote down how it was done -- in case
I had to do it again, or something... This is my mini-HOWTO on installing
Linux on a WD hard drive, assuming that EZ-BIOS, Win95 & OS/2 are already
installed. NB.: I use Boot Manager to switch operating systems; this is why
LILO must not be installed in the MBR. Hope it helps!

1. Start the computer with no diskette in drive A:
2. When EZ-BIOS has initialized, press Ctrl. Insert the Linux boot diskette
into A: and continue with boot procedure from A:.
3. Install Linux as appropriate.
4. Install LILO in the first Linux partition (NOT the Master Boot Record
(MBR)).
5. When Linux has installed, reboot to OS/2 and launch FDISK.
6. Add partition of type 83 to the Boot Manager
7. You're done!

Regards,

/Magnus

--

sics at the institute of chemistry http://www.df.lth.se/~mehinger
at Lund University, Sweden +46-46-222 45 13
-----------------------------------------------------------(o)---------
"The human mind treats a new idea like the body treats a strange pro-
tein -- it rejects it." /P.B. Medawar, biologist
Turn your pentium into a gameboy! Type "Win" at C:\>

by **Chris Morto** » Sun, 31 Dec 1899 09:00:00

Do a web search on "Mr BIOS", or go to the Award Bios web site. I
recently put one into my motherboard that wouldn't recognize > 8gig.
drives and wasn't Y2K compliant. The machine's a Linux server now.
I've been quite happy so far. Maybe they have a BIOS for you.

-----Original Message-----

Sent: Monday, August 09, 1999 9:17 PM

Subject: EZ-BIOS and LILO

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My old hard drive crashed. I've bought a new WD 13 Gig to replace it,
and
have installed Win98. I'd like to reinstall RH 5.2 as on my old hard
drive.

However, my BIOS doesn't support > 8 Gig HDD so I installed Western
Digital's EZ-BIOS. I assume that this "lives" in my MBR, I see a little
EZ-BIOS message at bootup, before the OS is loaded. Is there any
way that I can use LILO in my MBR as before? What alternatives do I
have? Compaq sez they don't have a BIOS upgrade for my computer
(Presario 4814 P233 MMX).

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by **Xiaopong Tra** » Sun, 31 Dec 1899 09:00:00

My old 6.4G Maxtor died a few months ago after a couple of
power outage. So I bought the WD 13G to replace it. My BIOS
can't get more than 8G as well. I installed EZ-BIOS. After
installing, EZ-BIOS showed that yellow message asking you
to install OS. I removed the floppy, insert the RH6.0 CD,
gave it the 3-finger salute, .... here I am, happily running
RH Linux 6.0. As simple as that.

Linux can see the whole disk. I used disk druid to create
/boot 15MB
Linux swap 125MB
/ the rest

LILO is also installed in MBR, as I know that Linux is going
to be the only OS running on this machine.

Happy computing.

Xiaopong

> Do a web search on "Mr BIOS", or go to the Award Bios web site. I
> recently put one into my motherboard that wouldn't recognize > 8gig.
> drives and wasn't Y2K compliant. The machine's a Linux server now.
> I've been quite happy so far. Maybe they have a BIOS for you.

> -----Original Message-----

> Sent: Monday, August 09, 1999 9:17 PM

> Subject: EZ-BIOS and LILO

> Message from the Deja.com forum:
> comp.os.linux.setup
> Your subscription is set to individual email delivery

> My old hard drive crashed. I've bought a new WD 13 Gig to replace it,
> and
> have installed Win98. I'd like to reinstall RH 5.2 as on my old hard
> drive.

> However, my BIOS doesn't support > 8 Gig HDD so I installed Western
> Digital's EZ-BIOS. I assume that this "lives" in my MBR, I see a little
> EZ-BIOS message at bootup, before the OS is loaded. Is there any
> way that I can use LILO in my MBR as before? What alternatives do I
> have? Compaq sez they don't have a BIOS upgrade for my computer
> (Presario 4814 P233 MMX).

> _____________________________________________________________
> Deja.com: Share what you know. Learn what you don't.
> http://www.deja.com/
> * To modify or remove your subscription, go to
> http://www.deja.com/edit_sub.xp?group=comp.os.linux.setup
> * Read this thread at
> http://www.deja.com/thread/%3C37AF7D80.1933EB1E%40csi.com%3E

> Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
> Share what you know. Learn what you don't.

by **Vilmos Sot** » Sun, 31 Dec 1899 09:00:00

> My old 6.4G Maxtor died a few months ago after a couple of
> power outage. So I bought the WD 13G to replace it. My BIOS
> can't get more than 8G as well. I installed EZ-BIOS. After
> installing, EZ-BIOS showed that yellow message asking you
> to install OS. I removed the floppy, insert the RH6.0 CD,
> gave it the 3-finger salute, .... here I am, happily running
> RH Linux 6.0. As simple as that.

> Linux can see the whole disk. I used disk druid to create
> /boot 15MB
> Linux swap 125MB
> / the rest

> LILO is also installed in MBR, as I know that Linux is going
> to be the only OS running on this machine.

You don't have to mess with things like EZ-BIOS. I have also a 13 GB
disk and Linux recognized it without any help. I even created my own
head/cylinder/sector numbers in the BIOS so now I "have" around 8 GB
under 1024.

Vilmos

--
Have you recompiled your kernel today?

by **John Wilco** » Sun, 31 Dec 1899 09:00:00

I have another problem that's similar in nature, it's a 10.1 GB HD with
EZ-Bios installed on it I have Windows 98 on
the first partition, with about 1.75 to 2 GB remaining,and I have been
wondering how to install Red Hat linux 6.0 without Repatitioning &
Reformating the whole HD?

John Wilcox
If CON is the Opposite of PRO
Woudn't that make CONgress the Opposite of PROgress?

by **Cameron L. Spitz** » Sun, 31 Dec 1899 09:00:00

> I have another problem that's similar in nature, it's a 10.1 GB HD with
>EZ-Bios installed on it I have Windows 98 on
>the first partition, with about 1.75 to 2 GB remaining,and I have been
>wondering how to install Red Hat linux 6.0 without Repatitioning &
>Reformating the whole HD?

First, run MS-Windows' FDISK and find out what Windows thinks the
disk "geometry" parameters are. That is, the numbers of
Cylinders, Heads, and Sectors per track.
Then look in your motherboard BIOS menus. With luck, it has the same CHS
numbers.

Get a Linux floppy such as Debian Rescue Disk, Red Hat Install Disk,
SuSE Install Disk, etc. Boot the EZ-Bios and use it to launch the
rescue disk up to the loader prompt, which comes up right away, and type
linux hda=12345,63,255

where the three numbers are the CHS numbers.

This will start Linux up with disk numbers that agree with the others.

The Install Disk will want to run an installation. Ignore it.
Type Alt-F2 to get the second console, and get a shell prompt.
Type
cfdisk
to get the Linux cool fdisk. If it isn't there, use the regular Linux fdisk.
Add the partitions you want. Do not try to change the MS-Windows partition
size or location with fdisk. (Use Partition Magic or FIPS for that.)

Write the partition table and reboot. Because you booted Linux Rescue
via EZ-Bios, the EZ-Bios, MS-Windows, and Linux will all agree on where
everything is.

Now run the Debian or Red Hat installation, and it will find the new
partitions and use them. Do not let the installation program install LILO.
Make a boot floppy and leave LILO until later.

If the boot floppy doesn't work, boot the rescue floppy and say
linux hda=12345,63,255 root=/dev/hda3
or whereever your root partition is.

When you get around to installing LILO, put a line in the lilo.conf file
append="hda=12345,63,255"
to inform the bootimage of the geometry.

EZ-BIOS is a pain in the ass, next time don't use it.

Cameron

by **Norman Levi** » Sun, 31 Dec 1899 09:00:00

> EZ-BIOS is a pain in the ass, next time don't use it.

But it may be possible to remove ezbios. Check on
"Maxtor" webpage. There's step by step info on how to check
your disk to see if it can run without ezbios. Then you can
remove it if you pass the test.

--
Norman Levin
vm/dynAmIX inc.

by **Cameron L. Spitz** » Sun, 31 Dec 1899 09:00:00

>> EZ-BIOS is a pain in the ass, next time don't use it.

>But it may be possible to remove ezbios. Check on
>"Maxtor" webpage. There's step by step info on how to check
>your disk to see if it can run without ezbios. Then you can
>remove it if you pass the test.

That stuff assumes you want to use the entire drive for Microsoft.

I have not seen a combination of drive and motherboard BIOS that
requires EZ-BIOS/OnTrack Disk Manager/etc for a successful
Linux installation. What I *have* seen are dual-boot
systems that required it because the Microsoft product required it.

One of the cases in the LILO mini-HOWTO described an install
without EZ-BIOS/OnTrack, on a drive with more than 1024 cylinders.
The key was to put the Microsoft product on the first 1023 cylinders,
and use the rest for Linux. The Lilo-related files are in
C:\LINUX\LILO in the Microsoft partition. /sbin/lilo complains about
the cylinder count, but it works anyway.

If you wanted more space for Microsoft than the first 1023 cylinders
*then* you'd need the EZ-BIOS/OnTrack thing, or a recent motherboard BIOS.

Cameron

by **Villy Kru** » Sun, 31 Dec 1899 09:00:00

Quote:>One of the cases in the LILO mini-HOWTO described an install
>without EZ-BIOS/OnTrack, on a drive with more than 1024 cylinders.
>The key was to put the Microsoft product on the first 1023 cylinders,
>and use the rest for Linux. The Lilo-related files are in
>C:\LINUX\LILO in the Microsoft partition. /sbin/lilo complains about
>the cylinder count, but it works anyway.

Make that 1020 for Microsoft and 3 cylinders for the linux /boot partition.
Then you won't have any lilo problems, provided, of course, that the kernel
file is in the /boot file system instead of in the root file system.

--
Villy

by **Cameron L. Spitz** » Sun, 31 Dec 1899 09:00:00

>>One of the cases in the LILO mini-HOWTO described an install
>>without EZ-BIOS/OnTrack, on a drive with more than 1024 cylinders.
>>The key was to put the Microsoft product on the first 1023 cylinders,
>>and use the rest for Linux. The Lilo-related files are in
>>C:\LINUX\LILO in the Microsoft partition. /sbin/lilo complains about
>>the cylinder count, but it works anyway.

>Make that 1020 for Microsoft and 3 cylinders for the linux /boot partition.
>Then you won't have any lilo problems, provided, of course, that the kernel
>file is in the /boot file system instead of in the root file system.

The three cylinders for Lilo is a convenience, but not a neccessity.
If you're installing Microsoft on cylinders 1-1023,
the directory C:\LINUX\LILO is a workable place for bzImage, message, map,
chain.b, and boot.b. The lilo installer and the LILO boot loader can
find things on an msdos or vfat partition.

If you mount C: as vfat, give the files 8+3 character uppercase names.

Cameron