Linux

Ask something
Discussion Locked

Lilo problems. Possibly from UDMA.

0 helpful
3 replies

by ganvar

Closed to new repliesThis discussion is closed. It stays readable, but it takes no new replies.

I have an A7V266-E board from Asus, with onboard Promise UltraDMA 100. I
have 2 HDs installed. The first one, (hde) is my drive with Win XP, and my
second one (hdg) is my linux (Slackware 8.1) drive. I followed a dual booting guide exactly (to
dual boot using ntloader using dd to copy the boot sector), and lilo only gets to L, and then loops 01.
In fact, the only way I can get into the system is to boot from the CD.
I edited my lilo.conf, and added lba32, but still no fix. Linux can see the
drives fine once I boot from CD.

The drive that contains XP, and a copy of the linux boot sector, is FAT32
formatted, so no blaming of NTFS. Btw, it is much more important to me that XP boots, and I really would like a solution that dosen't involve turning off UDMA in the BIOS.

Here is a copy of my lilo.conf:
# LILO configuration file
# generated by 'liloconfig'
#
# Start LILO global section
lba32
append="hdc=ide-scsi"
boot = /dev/hdg1
map=/boot/map
install=/boot/boot.b
message = /boot/boot_message.txt
prompt
timeout = 1200
# Override dangerous defaults that rewrite the partition table:
change-rules
reset
# Normal VGA console
vga = normal
# End LILO global section
# Linux bootable partition config begins
image = /boot/vmlinuz
root = /dev/hdg1
label = Linux
read-only
# Linux bootable partition config ends

3 replies

by m.mayberry

When lilo only displays an "L", that tells us that the first stage boot loader has been loaded and started, but that the second stage won't load. This is usually caused by a media failure or a geometry mismatch. Since you can boot to CD and see the drive, I would lean towards a geometry mismatch.

The sub-code "01" indicates that the disk may not be supported by the BIOS.

I would try 2 things initially.
1. Check with Asus for a BIOS update.
2. Verify the drive's geometry (i.e. boot to DOS and use a tool like dparam.com).

by m.mayberry

3. Or you can try this - add the "linear" directive to your lilo.conf file. This will cause LILO to use logical addresses instead of physical to store its data, forcing LILO to compute physical addresses at run time instead of at install time. Thiswill use the geometry supplied by the BIOS instead of that supplied by the kernel, and everything will "just work".

This discussion is closed to new replies.