When I began learning Linux a couple of weeks ago I had to physically switch from one harddisk (with my Windows and files on) to another, fresh one for Linux. In order to boot one or the other I had to pull off the cable from one and connect it to the other because I only had one SCSI II - III adapter. Today I've got another, and I'd like to connect both harddisks and boot either Linux or Windows from Lilo.

The problem is that while I have set the Linux harddisk to be the boot device in the controller setup, Linux starts to boot but then crashes with a kernel panic because it cannot find an ext3 filesystem on the new disk (of course not).

Is there any way I can make this system work so that I can boot either OS from Lilo?

Robin

hmmm...well I'm assuming if you just have the linux drive installed then everything boots okay correct? Most likely lilo.conf is trying to boot from /dev/sda1(The first partition of the first scsi disk). When you add the windows disk back in make sure you physically set the disk up as a slave drive to the linux disk. I believe this will cause linux to detect the windows disk and assign it to /dev/sdb.

I'm guessing that your current problems are happening because when you add the windows disk it is becoming /dev/sda rather then /dev/sdb. This would cause lilo to try and boot linux off the windows disk which obviously isn't going to happen.

The Linux disk is on ID 2, which I set as boot device ID in the controller; the Win disk is on 0. If I set the boot ID to 0 the Win disk boots ok; the Linux disk obviously begins to boot (Lilo is on that disk, and it does boot the kernel up to a point) but stops when it tries to mount the Win disk; IIRC (I'm in the office right now and can't check) it says something about sd8 or maybe sda8. The Linux partitions are sda1 and 6 respectively.

I can't do a master / slave setup like with IDE drives, only set the boot device in the controller bios.

Robin

Ok, after a bit more fiddling I can now boot from the Windows HD and use a program to read and write the Linux HD. I still can't boot the Linux HD when the Win HD is connected, too, as it still breaks off with a kernel panic in mid-boot.

I guess that there is a configuration for Lilo I can make to tell the system what to expect from the Win HD; I could make such edits from Windows. But what to edit, and what to put in?

Robin

Can you post your lilo.conf? lilo is probably trying to boot linux off the wrong disk. Also could you post the output of:

fdisk -l

I've solved it!

The problem was a rather trivial one: The Windows disk had SCSI ID 0 and the Linux one had ID 2; apparently the computer correctly read the boot sector of the Linux disk when I set the boot ID to 2 but Linux then identified sda1 not as the booting disk but as the first disk with an SCSI ID and therefore tried to check the filesystem on the Windows disk. I just switched the SCSI IDs and now I can at least boot either OS by choosing the boot device in the controller setup (Windows doesn't mind to be on ID 2).

I've also got file reading and writing access between the harddisks both from Linux to Win and back.

Next I will try and edit lilo.conf so that it includes the Win boot option, so that I don't have to switch it on the controller anymore. I'll be going by the Lilo-HowTo on control-escape.com first and be back if I fail. But I feel more confident by the minute, especially as the new disk killed my access to my parallel zip drive (which had previously been sdb4, now in conflict with the new hd) and I managed to edit fstab so that the ZIP already works again. One of these days I'll know my way around this OS, too

Robin