Mandrake 8.1 install problems
 

This is my first Linux install, and I picked a really sorry machine to do this with. It "was" a WinNT/Win 98 dual boot system, but both OS'es have been uninstalled. I only want linux on this machine. To complicate matters, it has SCSI drives and IDE drives, and it has both FAT32 and NTFS partitions. Ther are multiple hard drives.

First I tried to boot to the SCSI CD-ROM. That didn't work, so I then created a boot disk, and that loaded the SCSI drivers and the install started ok.

Everything was going swimmingly until it came to install 'bootloader' I selected MBR but I got "Syntax error near line 40 in file etc/lilo.cnf." I tried going back in with root, but it did not recognize my password.

I then rebooted in rescue mode but I cannot edit the file. I tried joe, nano, and that other one (I forget) and none of the editors will launch. I tried to launch the GUI and that won't work either.

Here is the config info:

root device (partition) on /dev/hda1

Mounting other partition fropm fstab on /mnt
Mounting /dev/hda6 on mnt/home type ext2
Mounting /dev/hdb1 on /mnt/mnt/winc type vfat
Mounting /dev/sda1 on /mnt/mnt/win_c3 type vfat
Mounting /dev/sda5 on /mnt/mnt/win_d2 type vfat

Can someone help me with this disaster? :cry:

thanks

Well, I decided to just reinstall. This time I selected "expert" mode. This allowed me to reformat my drives to "Linux Native" format.

So far so good, but I haven't gotten to "bootloader" yet...