Triple-boot Win98, 200 and Mandrake 7.2 - Lilo problems!

Rob G.

Senior member
Dec 15, 1999
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OK, let me first detail how my system is set up.
Drive 1 Partitions:
Win 98 (Pri. DOS)
Win 2000 (Ext. Dos Logical)
Files (Ext. Dos Logical)
Software (Ext. Dos Logical)

Drive 2 Partitions:
Linux /
Linux Swap
Linux Home

Both drives are 45gb IBMs and sit on the ATA/66 controller ports on my Asus CUBX mobo. My CD and CD-RW drives sit on the standard IDE controllers.

Mandrake 7.2 installed fine. I followed the LittleWhiteDog instructions on installing LILO to the / partition and so on...

1. Install LILO to / partition (hdg1)
2. Copy boot sector of Linux into floppy (linux.bin)
3. Copy Linux.bin onto C: drive (Win 98 partition)
4. Edit boot.ini to add in the Linux boot option

All I get when selecting Linux from the boot menu is 'LI' - and nothing else. Linux boots perfectly from the floppy boot disk created during installation - no problem there at all. And it runs well too.

On advice from a couple of the members over at LinuxNewbie, I edited lilo.conf to include the 'linear' option. Went through the same procedure again, exactly the same result - 'LI' and nothing more.

Now - if I can boot from floppy, why not with the above method? I don't want to start overwriting the MBR (Grub managed to screw that up on a previous install) or getting into third-party bootloaders if at all possible. The LittleWhiteDog method is simple and easy to remove - if only I could get it to work.

Anbody have any idea what is going on?
 

SUOrangeman

Diamond Member
Oct 12, 1999
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something must be awry with your /etc/lilo.conf file. Post if if you get a chance.

It shouldn't matter, but is hdg1 set to be active? Have you tried is with hdg1 not active (can be done from Linu'x fdisk)?

-SUO
 

DJE007

Senior member
Nov 20, 1999
503
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in youre /etc/lilo.conf

put "lba32"

boot of floppy run
/sbin/lilo

and that may help
 

Damaged

Diamond Member
Oct 11, 1999
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He has that in his lilo.conf file. I was gonna suggest removing it and see what happens. :)
 

Rob G.

Senior member
Dec 15, 1999
448
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I've tried it with 'linear' instead of 'lba32' but the result was the same.
 

Damaged

Diamond Member
Oct 11, 1999
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OK. Have you tried just commenting out the lba32 as I'm suggesting, AND redoing the boot file, meaning, dd if=blah of=blah, etc, /sbin/lilo. You should make sure you rewrite LILO whenever you make a change to the /etc/lilo.conf file. :)
 

Rob G.

Senior member
Dec 15, 1999
448
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I've just this minute rebooted after trying that.

Removing lba32 from lilo.conf results in Lilo not being able to run. It reports the cylinder being 7803 > 1024.
 

DJE007

Senior member
Nov 20, 1999
503
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ok redo the os with a /boot on /dev/hdb1 of about 15 - 20 mb so that linux can boot.
then / on hdb2 and swap on hdb3
 

Rob G.

Senior member
Dec 15, 1999
448
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OK, bear with me a second...

Because the two drives sit on the ATA66 controlled ports (onboard the CUBX) the drives come up as the following:

Drive1 - hde
Drive2 - hdg

So the Linux / is hdg1

Before I try out your suggestion... what difference will it make booting a /boot partition in the same place as the current / ?

I've heard of people putting a small /boot partition at the start of the first drive (hde in my system) - is this what you mean?
 

DJE007

Senior member
Nov 20, 1999
503
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you need to keep below the 1024 cylinder mark for youre boot image so lilo will work
"new ver don't have this prob but you never know"
 

Rob G.

Senior member
Dec 15, 1999
448
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I did try one install with the / partition taking up only first 500mb of Drive 2 (well below the 1024 mark). Exactly the same result.

Think I'll try the /boot option on Drive 1.
 

afropick

Senior member
Feb 8, 2001
355
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Well Rob G.,

Just in case you were thinking about this, it doesn't work...

I previously had both my drives on the highpoint controller and I was basically having the same problem as you...

So I decided to try putting the drive I'm trying to install linux with on the regular ide controller and reinstalling...

Still hangs at "stage1" when I select "Linux-Mandrake 7.2" from the NT boot loader menu.
 

Rob G.

Senior member
Dec 15, 1999
448
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Sorry it's taken me a while to come back. I've been working on this ALL DAY! :)

I've got it to work here's how I did it...


  • Back up the whole of drive 1 with Ghost
    Use DiskDrake (during install) to resize the last FAT32 partition on Drive 1. I added in a 32mb partition right at the end of the disc and used it to mount /boot during installation.
    Use DiskDrake to set up /, swap and /home partitions on Drive 2
    Install Mandrake using the above partitions
    When bootloader install came up, installed Lilo to hde8 - the boot partition mentioned above
    Boot Mandrake from floppy and perform the dd... comand to extract the boot sector to floppy
    Reboot machine into Windows 98 and copy linux.bin file from floppy to C:\
    Edit C:\boot.ini to include the Mandrake option pointing at C:\Linux.bin
    Reboot and try all OSs!

Now - I'm not sure what problems you're having, but this works pefectly on my setup (which sounds similar to yours). The original problem on mine was obviously that the machine could not boot anything off Drive 2. Having /boot on Drive 1 - even at the end of the disc - did the trick!
 

afropick

Senior member
Feb 8, 2001
355
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Hey Rob G.

Glad you got your system working. Questions for you though:

1) What made you try this method? Did you just decide to "give it a shot" or are you hiding vauluable information from the rest of us.

2) In your post you say: "Use DiskDrake (during install) to resize the last FAT32 partition on Drive 1. I added in a 32mb partition right at the end of the disc and used it to mount /boot during installation."

Does this mean that it must be the last FAT32 partition or just whatever is at the end of the drive? I have win98 & win2k on one disk and they spit it equally with win2k & NTFS being what's at the end.

3) Why does this work?

Any help will be greatly appreciated.
 

Rob G.

Senior member
Dec 15, 1999
448
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What made you try this method? Did you just decide to "give it a shot" or are you hiding vauluable information from the rest of us.


Nope, DJE007 suggested it above. I'd read about other people using it over on LinuxNewbie but didn't want to start messing around with partitions unless I had to.

Does this mean that it must be the last FAT32 partition or just whatever is at the end of the drive? I have win98 & win2k on one disk and they spit it equally with win2k & NTFS being what's at the end.

I don't believe so. I think you could have /boot at any point on Drive 1 and it would work the same way. The thing to remember is to make sure the partition numbers (as DOS sees them) remain the same for Windows 2000. The NT booloader makes a reference to the disk and partition number where it can find the Win2000 root directory. If this gets changed it can be a tricky job getting Win2K to work again - I know because I hit the problem yesterday and ended up starting from scratch again.

On my system, W98 is the Primary DOS partition and W2K sits on the first logical drive in the Extended section. I had to make sure that the /boot partition came after W2K otherwise the drive letters would get rearranged and I may have had probs getting W2K to load again. There may be a more elegant way of getting around the problem but I'm not experienced enough to know! :)

Why does this work?

Lilo is installed to /boot on Drive 1 - a partition that the system is quite happy to boot from. With the 'dd' command, you're 'stealing' the boot sector from /boot and placing it in the C:\ directory where the NT bootloader can see it. So, NT bootloader comes up first as usual and when the option is selected sees the file containing the Lilo bootsector pointing towards /boot - and you're on the way!