Subject: #1, make it boot! Engage.

From: "Charles A. Schuman" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 20 Aug 1996 19:58:45 -0500 (CDT)

This is my original post <cas>

cas> I've a kernel on the /dev/sda2 partition in the /boot directory,
cas> and it's called vmlinuz.   My boot partition doesn't seem to be set
cas> correctly, because it's not booting /dev/sda2 as root.  Instead, it
cas> displays "Loading Linux ....", then "boot: " and then 
cas> "Loading Linux ...." again in an endless loop. 

Bruce replies:
b> Can you make it boot using a floppy disk kernel? You should be able to
b> boot the installation root disk with the command
b> "linux root=XXX", and have it come up on your hard disk root (I'm
b> assuming you have a hard disk root already installed). Send me your
b> lilo.conf .

I used the debian boot and root disks (root is now a ram drive)
and I've mounted my original root drive on /target.  From there,
I've tried to re-lilo.  Here's the scoop:

# mount
/dev/ramdisk0 on / type minix (rw)
proc on /proc type proc (rw)
/dev/sda2 on /target type ext2 (rw)

# df
Filesystem    1024 blocks Used  Available Capacity  Mounted on
/dev/ramdisk0     1404    1237     167      88%        /
/dev/sda2      1436388  392333  969834      29%        /target

# fdisk  (then "p")
   Device Boot Begin Start  End  Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1  *    1      1    251   513891   6  DOS 16-bit >=32M
/dev/sda2     252    252    976 1484437+  83  Linux native
/dev/sda3     977    977   1003   55282+  82  Linux swap

salwen replies:
s> Is it possible that you have a disk that is bigger than your bios rom
s> knows how to handle?  Or that you changed the kernel but didn't run
s> lilo again?

Yes, to both. The disk is large and I may not have run lilo _properly_
when I updated the kernel image stored as /boot/vmlinuz. I ran lilo.

The drive is a SLED (Single Large Expensive Disk).
What if I had drives in a RAID (Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks)?  
How can I tell if the BIOS is going to handle it?  I think I have a 
rom on the controller that supports the large drives and supports hardware
RAID (And Linux supports software RAID in the new kernel!)

Here's the messed up lilo.conf on what now is /target/etc/lilo.conf:

boot=/dev/sda2
root=/dev/sda2
install=/target/boot/boot.b
vga=normal
delay=20
image=/target/boot/vmlinuz
label=Linux

I can't even begin to speculate on what this is all doing.  I know the
kernel supports the hardware.  After the install of 2.0.0, I compiled
2.0.10, installed it, ran lilo, booted.  Then I compiled 2.0.13, installed
it, ran lilo, and didn't boot. I tried running lilo again, after booting
from the install floppys, then I edited lilo.conf as seen above and tried
again.   Is there any hope?

Charles

PS.  Sorry if I've sent duplicate copies when replying to the people
who've replied to my first post.  Thank you for your encouragement.

---

From: [email-masked]
Date: Wed, 21 Aug 1996 01:47:56 -0400

>s> knows how to handle?
>How can I tell if the BIOS is going to handle it? 
Well, if you needed to load a special driver to run DOS with the disk then
the BIOS dowsn't handle it.  Since you have less than 1024 cylinders on the
disk I don't think this is the problem, though.

Sorry I'm not of more help.

Nathan