Ok...I have been reading through the vast number of posts on this forum trying to dicipher the solution to my problem. My system freezes at "LI"

I initially partitioned my hard drive into 4 separate areas. 2 are ntfs file systems, 1 is the native linux and the other is the swap partition. Windows 200 was installed before Linux. As well, documentation I read stated not to load LILO to the MBR if I was using Partition Magic or Windows 2000 so I installed to /dev/hde1

lilo.conf file

boot="/dev/hde6"
map=/boot/map
install=/boot/boot.b
prompt
timeout="50"
message=/boot/message
lba32
default=Windows

image="/boot/vmlinuz-2.4.2-2smp"
label="linux"
read-only
root="/dev/hde6"

image="/boot/vmlinuz-2.4.2-2"
label="linux-up"
read-only
root="/dev/hde6"

other=/dev/hde1
label="Windows"



I have tried linear instead of lba32 with no success however, the weirdest thing is it did work fine until I reinstalled and added more programs to linux.

After reading the posts I have come up with 2 possible solutions??? I think?

Enter my hard drive geometry into my lilo.conf

disk=/dev/hde6
sectors=63
heads=255
cylinders=5606

I am not sure what to put for my bios= or if this is the correct format.
When I inserted the above it screamed bloody murder stating that hde6 was not an entire drive or something like that. I got the disk geometry from the hdparam -g /dev/hde6 commmand

My linux partitions are 4GB with everything installed on the root directory and a swap partition of 128 MB

my fstab file reads like this:

LABEL=/ / ext2 defaults 1 1
/dev/fd0 /mnt/floppy auto noauto,owner 0 0
none /proc proc defaults 0 0
none /dev/pts devpts gid=5,mode=620 0 0
/dev/hde5 swap swap defaults 0 0
/dev/cdrom /mnt/cdrom iso9660 noauto,owner,kudzu,ro 0 0
/dev/hdb4 /mnt/zip100.0 auto owner,exec,dev,suid,rw,noauto,kudzu 0 0
/dev/cdrom1 /mnt/cdrom1 iso9660 noauto,owner,kudzu,ro 0 0


OR

Create a new partition for the /boot partition and make it under 1024 cylinders?
If I have to take this method...What is a nondestructive way to add another partition without killing my much needed ntfs data.
I hope this makes sense to someone for I know it does not to me!

P.S. I am not sure if it matters but I have a AMD Athlon 1.1 Ghz with ATA100 45 GIG Harddrive

I have looked in my bios to check my drice geometry but the drive is automatically detected on bootup by an Ultra ATA 100 detector.

Linux Newbie

Gladiator

Are u sure it's /dev/hde? If uve got only one HD as IDE master it can't be /dev/hde, but its /dev/hda, the 1st slave would be /dev/hdb, and the 2nd IDE master would be /dev/hdc etc. Now with Partition Magic it's easy to add a primary partition about 10 megs in size for /boot and keep ure ntfs safe.

There's an alternative I know works tho.
Since uve installed W2K, u can boot tru W2K's boot.ini.
U need a floppy and the excellent and free Explore2FS.
Ok, boot into Linux using a floppy.
Now we strip the bootsector off with (w/o quotes):
"dd if=/dev/hda6 of=/tmp/bootsect.lin bs=512 count=1" , where /dev/hda6 is the partition LILO is installed in.
Back in W2K use Explore2FS, locate the /tmp/bootsect.lin and copy it to where W2K's boot.ini is.
Attrib -s -h -r on boot.ini, add a line at the bottom:
"C:\bootsect.lin="Linux"" (keep the inner quotes), save, quit. Attrib's +s +h +r back on boot.ini, reboot.

HTH

Yes, I am sure the drive is hde6

My understanding is:

The first primary is my DVD Drive
Slave to this is my IDE Internal Zip Drive

hdc and hdd I am unsure of...

hde --> MBR
hde1 --> Main Windows Boot partition
hde8 --> 2nd Windows Boot Partition
hde6 --> Main Linux Native Partition
hde5 --> Linux Swap

I have no idea what hde2,3,4,7 are and why it jumped around. It is straight from the linux install

I am a bit confused by your reply because of my limited knowledge about linux but I will try what you explained and let you know how it turns out...

Was there any solution based on altering the drive geometry or setting it I should say...

How can I partition my drive with Partition Magic if it is a Windows based program which I can not access?

Hoping for a solution...

Gladiator

P.S. Thankyou for your reply

First of all however I look at it, this is an unusual setup. Anyway, I was under the impression u where able to boot at least into W2K?! If not, why not use the W2K installer cd's rescue option to restore access...

Now guessing from ure disksize of 45Gb (didnt notice that in prev. reading), uve got to use a diskmanager like Partition Magic to make room & add a /boot partition. It comes with images so u can create a 2-floppy version of PM. IMHO its totally worth the money and for me the only way to work on partitions with valuable data on it without destroying it.

About disk geometry params for LILO u best read the Large Disk How-to at http://www.linuxdoc.org/HOWTO/Large-Disk-HOWTO.html.

I hope some one else will correct me or add more.

Since your hard drive is on /dev/hde you have it attached to a pci-slot ide controller.
It might help to know what brand it is, since some controllers are difficult to get to work.

My Hard drive is an IBM ATA 100 45 Gig... Now the board I have is ASUS A7V... The hard drive is connected to the board through an ATA 100 slot HOWEVER, I believe the board treats it like a SCSI device.

I desperately need a solution...

Any ideas appreciated.

Thanks
Gladiator

If the system treats your ata controller as a scsi device then your device shouldn't be named /dev/hde but rather /dev/sgxx, meaning generic scsi.
At least when it come to ide-CD writers you encounter this problem since many cd-writers still hasn't support. The way you get a cd-writer to work is buy using what is called generic scsi, a kind of scsi emulation for ide.

Have you tried the nuni bootloader? (http://www.linuxforum.com/plug/articles/nuni.html). Your disk is large I believe, and your boot-data is not within the first 1024 cylinders. All this may cause problems with lilo. I have found nuni a lot more forgiving under such circumstances. (Boot-data past first 1024 cylinders is one source of problems. A very large disk and a disk-manager are other factors which may couse trouble)

I have a four year old Pentium system, using a single IBM ATA-100 60 Gig disk, setup as dual-boot (NT4 and Redhat 7). It has the NT4 MBR bootloader installed and nuni started from the NT4 boot menu. The system's bios couln't handle the size of the disk, so I have the IBM recommended disk manager installed, which override the system bios when it comes to reporting disk geometry and size. I never suceeded in getting LILO to boot the system, but nuni works fine.

If you are not using the on-board IDE port (which I do), you may have to change the nuni setup and experiment a little. I believe it is described in the nuni documenation. Good luck.

Ps. Don't forget to fiddle around with hdparams to get the full performace out of you ATA-100 disk. It is not using the ATA performance boosting features "out of the box". Ds.

/Olle