Ok amid many problems with suse 9.3 pro, the one that was really getting to me was this whole dual booting problem with XP. 80GB with 10GB SUSE and the rest XP. This hard drive is the primary master drive.

After having installed suse after XP, the bootloader (LILO) didn’t work and on switching on it would go straight to XP. I soon figured out that this was because although the bootloader was being written to /de/hda1, the MBR was not being replaced. So I did this (booting into suse using the install CD1). Lo and behold what happens, where LILO should appear something similar to the below appeared:

I then went into suse again and changed LILO for GRUB. The same thing happened.

At this point I boot into the XP Recovery Console using the XP install disk. I then issued the fixmbr command and it wrote a new mbr to \Device\Harddisk0\Partition0. So I thought this would allow me to boot into XP at the least and I would then try and then I could start afresh with trying to fix the suse bootloader.

To my surprise, GRUB came up with the Linux and Windows options I had set up. So I tried to boot into XP. Screen went blank and went back to GRUB. Chose Linux and it loaded fine. I then noticed that I couldn’t access the XP partition from suse when previously I was able to. Alarm bells rung. And rightly so it turned out. The XP partition had become corrupted. Aaaargh. So after a fresh install and recovery of the residual files I hadn’t backed up, this is where I am: computer boots in XP and if I want to run suse I have to use the suse install CD1.

I am thinking of loading suse of the install CD1, and creating a new bootloader configuration. However, I fear this will just repeat the error in code above and the process will ultimately start again.

Yup:
Your not alone. I got the same thing with the Grub loader althought I didn't notice the beginning character, in your case the "L" could stand for LILO, since I threw up my hands in discuss and had to walk away. I think mine were: GRUB _ 099 099 099 .... not sure. Of course the system freezes up after about half a page of numbers. Cannot help but encourage you to keep trying and if you are sucessfull come back and let us know what you did, if u can remember.

paul_e_t: this is probably the safest solution

Thanks Jongi:

very useful info in your referral (this is ... safest solution) I hope Novell/SuSE does something about the problem. It seems that SuSE is slowly going downhill, from a user's viewpoint,
since the takeover.

Good Luck and
Have fun

Paul

To recap: Initially installed SUSE 9.3 Pro on a system that already had XP. Used Lilo as the bootloader. Error with an L and a number of 99s occurred where one would expect Lilo to come up. Tried to restore the XP bootloader by running fixmbr from XP Recovery Console. Screwed up things. Reinstalled XP and was able to load XP from harddrive. Had to load SUSE from install CD1.

So I downloaded a program called BootItNG from http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/. I then created a floppy BootIt disk and saved the working XP MBR to floppy. SO now I was confident of experimenting with YaST to get the bootloader working and be able to restore from floppy if anything went wrong.

I tried to install Lilo with this base configuration (proposed by YaST) [config1]:

Location: 1. IDE, 76.3GB, /dev/hda. Maxtor (MBR)
Default: Windows (/dev/hda1)
Sections: Linux, Windows (default), Failsafe
Activate MBR: No
Replace MBR code: Leave untouched
Backup affected area: No
Save method: Save only changed.

The dreaded error below was my greeting on reboot

I then tried to repair the bootloader by choosing repair installed system from the install CD1. I changed the following in config1 [config2]:
Activate MBR: Yes
Replace MBR Code: Yes
Backup affected area: Yes
Save Method: Force save everything.

Then, the dreaded error.

I then changed the following from config2 [config3]:
Location: /dev/fd0
Activate MBR: Yes, (activate /dev/hda3) – the part in brackets is what the bootloader put in

Then, the dreaded error.

I then changed the following from config2 [config4]:
Location: /dev/hda3

Yes, the dreaded error.

So by now I figured I had exhausted the possible Lilo combinations. And thought let me give GRUB a chance. I restored the XP MBR, boot from install CD1 and chose to repair the bootloader.

Location: 1. IDE, 76.3GB, /dev/hda. Maxtor (MBR)
Disk Order: /dev/hda, /dev/hdd, /dev/hdc
Default: Windows
Sections: Linux, Windows (default), Failsafe
Activate MBR: No
Replace MBR code: Leave untouched
Use dedicated bootloader area: Yes
Backup affected area: No
Add saved MBR to booltoader: No
Save method: Save only changed.

Then, SUCCESS!!!!!!

This would lead me to believe that Lilo has an issue writing to the MBR which is NTFS (the /dev/hda is a NTFS drive except for the Linux partition on it).

Hi all

I've just loaded Suse Pro 9.3 and have always used GRUB, mainly on account of the warning message that comes up from time to time when updating that says something to the effect that 'if you are using Lilo be sure to do something or other after the update otherwise etc..etc..'

I can't remember what the message was but thought best to avoid it.

I found a little surprise on uppdating, there are 4multimedia packs available on update for 9.3 so i thought lets go for it.

Then I got a message after update telling me I'd better check for conflicts...? Hang about this is an official update? Then I got a couple of circular conflicts whose only remedy was to un-install Audacity and Alsa player. This on a near default KDE based install.

Most odd.

Then again Suse is a bit more cutting edge these days than it used to be. Still ended up putting the old SUSE 9.1 pro DVD as a alternative source, to install Gentoo file manager though. It is amazing how sparse the Distro is becoming as certain applications grow in physical size. Novell appears to be allowing many non core applications to wither away.

The how to install a source thread (it's a sticky on this forum) is particularly useful if your favourite application is missing from the latest version.

I also had to press the manual restart/ hot boot button onmy computer box after updating as the system refused to accept a software shutdown.

Still it looks ok after, not finished exploring it though.

Mad Malc

Sorry I have a duplicate reply going for some unknown reason? Please Moderator erase this post I've removed the content as it duplicated the above.

After using SuSe 9.2 pro for some time with no problems, I decided to go for 9.3, a big mistake, all sorts of problems.
The floppy would not mount (OK who needs a floppy) the sound had to be all reconfigured, trouble with the bootloader.
As far as the floppy was concerned according to the forums this was a known bug as is the bootloader problem.
So I thought time to try another distro after experimenting with Xandros, Debian 3.1 Sarge, Mandriva, Ubuntu and Mepis, I tried Fedora core 4 and everything thing worked, absolutely nothing to configure.
So if one distro does not work have some fun and experiment with others.

I am sorry, this is not a reply to the previous question.


I installed Suse 9.1 and it works perfectly for a year now, except for one thing, that my Windows drives, that are mounted, I think, have one-way access. I can read them, read their content but I cannot place files onto them.

Does anyone have an advice?

Best,
k.acs

I have my computer with 3 HD's inside of it. 2 of them are for Win XP Home and the 3rd is for Suse Linux 9.1 Pro. I had a buddy help me install the Suse and I think we used GRUB to install it. I will boot into a Suse background with a choice of Linux, Windows, Floppy and Failsafe. Everything is working fine. About 3 weeks ago I tried to install Suse Linux 9.3 by myself with not much knowledge about Linux already, but wanted to do it on my own. That was a mistake. I installed it as a "new install" option thinking I would be able to write ontop of my current Linux, like an upgrade and keep the setting, well that didn't work (got the DVD ROM from Linux Magazine which put's out a distro with every magazine in the mail). I then restarted my computer and got an error of GRUB LOADING....error 22. I later found out there was a problem with my boot loader missing and something else missing. I tried to re-install the Suse 9.3 and still the same problem. After about 30 minutes going by, I then put the Suse 9.1 back on the computer and everything was fine.

What kind of things did I do wrong? How do I FDISK the Linux on my 3rd HD? If I were to delete the partition from the "disk mngt" in Win XP, would I still be able to boot the computer in Win XP and just have a new HD that is unpartitioned? I would like to install another version of Linux on the HD, can I just write over the top of the current version with another DVD ROM that I have of Linux?

Any assistance would be helpful, yes I'm new at Linux, but I really want to learn how to use it.

Thanks....zacherfamily
e-mail@zacherfamily.com
http://www.zacherfamily.com

Yup ... btdt. OK ... piece of cake (coming from a nubbie me-self). When you launch your 9.3 cd do the install as an "upgrade" to your 9.1 and you should be ok.

e.g., DO NOT do it as a "New Install" ... otherwise you'll have to ensure you have the correct volume to which your installing to keep it from possibly overwriting your other partitions.

I just upgraded my 9.3 to 10.0 RC1 without a hitch. Infact, I'd recommend the 10.0 upgrade with two exceptions ... I haven't been able to get mp3's to play yet with the SuSe 10.0 RC1 x86-64 version yet (although it appears in the 32 bit version this is easily addressed) ... and I haven't been able to get my WiFi Motorola nic to work as of yet (it seems a combination of things, one is that broadcom doesn't support x86-64 with this particular card and/or I'm such a nubbie I'm just simply doing something wrong with the ndiswrapper). Other than these two things it is an awesome distro to go to. Very professionally done (which it should be given it's carring the Novell name) and easy to migrate to from a windows enviroment. I'm going to do a 32 bit install on a couple of desktops so I can play with the networking and various servers. If you want some step wise instructions I'll be happy to post something later tomorrow ... maybe even with either some screen shots or some stills. Let me know.

oprogue.

oprogue,

sure any assistance would be great, I have a few more questions, but didn't post them above since I didn't want my post to be a VERY long one. Please send me an e-mail to the address listed above , e-mail@zacherfamily.com . So I do it as an upgrade it will keep all my original settings?? Is there a big difference between the Suse 9.1 and 9.3?

I'm going out of town for about a week, but when I get back i'll be very interested in what you have to offer. I would also like to shorten the partition that I have for Suse also, it's currently on a 160 GB HD, since I didn't know if I were to put an NTFS partition on it, how it would react to Linux. I would like to make the partitions about 15 GB each so I have room to install about 5-6 more distro's If I wanted to on the same HD. I'm still not sure which distro I like.


Thanks,

Tom Zacher
e-mail@zacherfamily.com
http://www.zacherfamily.com

If I'm correct the installation issue was with parted ... I'm pretty certain this was resolved with 9.3. There will be some signifigant differences between 9.1 and 9.3. As an upgrade many of the settings will probably transfer over without issue (this was the case in my upgrade between 9.2 and 10.0). Many will advise not to upgrade if your current distro is doing what you want it too ... eh ... go cutting edge ... it's only through the efforts of enduser feedback that improvements can take place.

You can use either parted or a utility like Partition Magic to resize your partitions. Interaction between distros and NTFS is varied. Fat32 seems to be a good medium between the Windows and Linux enviroments (just be conscious of extend disk sizes and the limitations of Fat32 ... the work around is multiple Fat32 partitions). 15GB is quite large in some respects ... find out what the minimum is for the largest distro you intend to install and go with that (plus a couple of gig ... you'll need a single swap space (there's debate on the size ... I use a 1G partition ... rule of thumb is the size of your ram ... with large drives, what's a gig or two).

A far as distros go ... SuSe, Ubuntu, MEPIS, Gentoo, Debian and Slackware would be my picks from the major distributions ... other distros of interest include SLAX, Vector, Scientifix, Pentoo, and a host of others I've toyed with. You can't go wrong with the major ones listed on distrowatch.com ... but this isn't to discount the smaller distros either. If your on dialup I wouldn't waste the time downloading them ... much faster and less frustrating to just order 'em. Factors to consider would be hardware limitations (ram, supported hardware, and the alike) and what your eventual end use will entail. Currently I'm using SuSe and Ubuntu for all my production work and websurfing ... and I only use Windows for gaming (too many bugs to surf on the net for an extended time). Alot of gaming issues are being resolved ... for my purposes I've pretty much settled on SuSe and Ubuntu at this time (but intend to play more with Gentoo, Debian and Slackware). I'll snap some stills of the 32bit SuSe 10.0 RC1 I hope to install over the next couple of days.

Hi K.acs

It sounds like you need to look at your permissions, right click the windows partition and select properties , permissions. to see if you only have read permissions.

Read only permissions are not a bad thing if you are using NTFS for the windows file system, I wouldn't advise writing to ntfs partitions using linux, it is possible but it is probably one of the many reasons M$ created it that it's not advisable.

If your windows partitions are Fat32 go ahead and change the permissions. I recently copied a complete partitions' data from an NTFS partition, to /home reformatted the partition as FAT32, then copied the data back from /home.

I used an MMC root console to edit the partition permissions in /etc/fstab.

Hope this helps.

If in doubt back up your data first.

Mad Malc

I would like to put my question here:



I used the SuSe linux Cd , there were 4 options, I choosed option Repair The Linux Installation.
It asked me if I want to repair the boot loader or not, then I answered YES.

The LilO/Grub is reinstalled and I can logon to my windows successfully. But I failed to logon the SuSe.

Here are the message:

..........
Start Unicode mode
fsck failed for at least one files system (not /).
Please repair manually and reboot.
The root file system is is already mounted rea_write

Give root password for login:
none:~#


I`m stuck here..What should I do next?

Thank you