2 dif HDs refuse to boot with LILO

2 dif HDs refuse to boot with LILO

Post by Harry Mangal » Fri, 24 Jun 1994 09:24:30



Hi All,
Sort of a newbie question - just upgraded (by NFS! what a pleasure!
Patrick Volkerding is a god!) to the latest slackware version and am trying

to get LILO to work correctly.

   Everything installed OK and the system is useable, but it WILL NOT
   boot from the HD.  I have an adaptec aha1540c (floppy-less) scsi
controller,
   Maxtor 3.5" HH LXT 340 MB drive (as well as an older IMPRIMIS 5.25" FH
   600MB drive with which I am having similar problems).  I also have one
   of the infamous 486SLC2/66 Blue Lightning/Alaris motherboards w/ AMI
   BIOS (yes, I read about the problem with the BIOS setting for
   disk type 47 0:300 vs DOS 1K - tried it both ways)

The fdisk setup is: (note the comment after the "/dev/sda1" line - is
this significant?)

Disk /dev/sda: 64 heads, 32 sectors, 324 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 2048 * 512 bytes

   Device Boot  Begin   Start     End  Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1   *       1       1      24   24575+  83  Linux native
Partition 1 does not start on cylinder boundary:
     phys=(0, 0, 2) should be (0, 1, 1)
/dev/sda2          25      25      41   17408   82  Linux swap
/dev/sda3          42      42     324  289792   83  Linux native

   My lilo.conf (generated by the install program) looks like:

# LILO configuration file
# generated by 'liloconfig'
#
# Start LILO global section
boot = /dev/sda
#compact        # faster, but won't work on all systems.
delay = 50
vga = normal    # force sane state
ramdisk = 0     # paranoia setting
# End LILO global section
# Linux bootable partition config begins
image = /vmlinuz
  root = /dev/sda1
  label = Linux
# Linux bootable partition config ends
# DOS bootable partition config begins
other = /dev/sdc1
  label = DOS
  loader = any_d.b
  table = /dev/sdc
# DOS bootable partition config ends

(I plan to install 2 other disks, hence the '/dev/sdc' entry.

   The problem is 2 fold. First, after the installation and making
   the boot floppy, I can use the boot floppy to boot up the machine just
   fine.
   However, after installing LILO with the above lilo.conf file to a
   test floppy, it will star to boot correctly, but give the following
error
   midway thru the boot process:

                        .
                        .

Partition check:
sda: sda1 sda2 sda3
MINIX-fs: unable to read superblock
EXT2-fs: unable to read superblock
XIA-FS: read super_block failed (inode.c 74)
MSDOS bread failed
isofs_read_super: bread failed, dev 0x341 iso_blknum 16
Weird - unlocked, clean and not uptodate buffer on list 0
Weird - unlocked, clean and not uptodate buffer on list 0
Weird - unlocked, clean and not uptodate buffer on list 0
Weird - unlocked, clean and not uptodate buffer on list 0
Weird - unlocked, clean and not uptodate buffer on list 0
Weird - unlocked, clean and not uptodate buffer on list 0
harddisk I/O error
dev 0341, sector 0
HPFS: map_sector: read error
Kernel Panic: VFS: Unable to mount root

and then hang.

   Rebooting with the original (non-LILO) boot floppy will bring the system
up
   normally and in fact the fsck that takes place in the course of normal
   bootup finds nothing wrong (as implied by the error messages above).  
   The one time I did fsck the root fs, it did find a few
   inconsistancies, but correcting them did nothing to change this
   behavior.

The other problem is thatI've never been able to get either of my HDs to
boot with LILO, despite setting (and resetting the MBR with the DOS "fdisk
/mbr" command, using the linux fdisk, reformatting (high and low level),
etc.  Haven't even been able to get a part of the 'LILO' trace to show.  
After going thru the normal power-on procedures (memory check, check of the

Adaptec BIOS, detecting the HD, checking the floppy), it just sits there
like a dead dog with the line "Missing operating system" glaring at me.  

Any ideas, suggestions, pointers, FMs to read, HOWTOS welcomed.  Responses
will be summarised and posted, with results.

   Thanks
   Harry

--

Harry Mangalam, VCO/Micro+Mol Genetics, Irvine Hall, College of Medicine,
UC Irvine, Irvine, CA, 92717, Vox:(714) 856-4824, Fax:(714) 725-2118,

There's no better glory, when it all gets harried, to be laughing in the
midst of it all.   --- Doug and the Slugs ---

 
 
 

2 dif HDs refuse to boot with LILO

Post by Harry Mangal » Sat, 25 Jun 1994 14:57:00




> Hi All,
> Sort of a newbie question - just upgraded (by NFS! what a pleasure!
> Patrick Volkerding is a god!) to the latest slackware version and am trying

> to get LILO to work correctly.

>    Everything installed OK and the system is useable, but it WILL NOT
>    boot from the HD.  I have an adaptec aha1540c (floppy-less) scsi
> controller,
>    Maxtor 3.5" HH LXT 340 MB drive (as well as an older IMPRIMIS 5.25" FH
>    600MB drive with which I am having similar problems).  I also have one
>    of the infamous 486SLC2/66 Blue Lightning/Alaris motherboards w/ AMI
>    BIOS (yes, I read about the problem with the BIOS setting for
>    disk type 47 0:300 vs DOS 1K - tried it both ways)

Hi All, Sorry to have bothered you with this problem - it's fixed, although
I'm not sure at what stage it fixed itself.  I did try the pfdisk utility
which did not appear to do anything (although it mentioned (on initial run
called out of the Makefile) that it fixed a problem with /dev/sda (the
Maxtor).
   I also carefully redid the lilo configuration afterwards and to my
surprise, it worked.  I had also removed a 1.2 MB floppy and reconfig'ed
the BIOS before redoing lilo.  ANyway, it works like a charm, booting to
both DOS and linux on command.

I'd still be interested in other's problems because I'll probably be doing
more of these installs for all the PCs in the dept.

Cheers
Harry Mangalam, Microbiology  + Molecular Genetics, College of Medicine, UC

                        ---  Life is messy  ---

 
 
 

1. lilo config for dual hd-boot hd->ramdisk-boot?

Hi, I've got a 128 Mb flashdisk with hda1 partition of size 48Mb
(actually 50192Kb), of which 41Mb is used. I can directly boot this
partition with a standard lilo configuration. Oh, I have 64Mb of RAM,
but the OS, my small program, and no other servers require only 6Mb of
this.

Since it is a flashdisk, with limited rewrite capabilities, I would like
to load the whole of this hda1 partition into a ramdisk and use the
ramdisk as the root fs, that way I only ever read from the flashdisk.

I don't think I need to use initrd (since my kernel *already* has
everything it will need, I do not need to do a two-stage boot),  and I
don't think I need a compressed image of the root filesystem (since the
first partition, which, as explained above, I can also use directly as
the root filesystem, contains exactly what I want to load into RAM).

Ok, so my 2.2.19 kernel has ramdisk support compiled in - i.e. not just
as a module, and also loopback device and initrd, though I don't think I
need the last two of these.

My lilo.config has:

        boot=/dev/hda
        prompt
        timeout=30

        #  To use hda1 as root
        image=/path/to/the/kernel
                label=flash
                root=/dev/hda1

        #  To load hda1 into ram0 and use *that* as root fs
        image=/path/to/the/kernel
                label=ram
                append="root=/dev/ram0 start_ramdisk=0 ramdisk_size=50192 load_ramdisk=1"

Booting the 'flash' works fine, but booting 'ram' doesn't; the kernel
gets loaded correctly, but then it says "can't mount root filesystem on
01:00". I presume '01:00' means major 1 minor 0, which *is* ram0, so it
seems that the kernel knows what I want to be the root filesystem, it's
only that it failed to load the partition into memory before trying to
mount it.

I also tried adding 'prompt_ramdisk=1' just to see if it was even seeing
any of the ramdisk-related kernel parameters, and it did not prompt me
after loading the kernel, before attempting to load/mount the root
filesystem.

Can anybody offer any advice? Many thanks!

Alexis

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