Problem with LOLO and duel boot
 

I have 3 hard drives, 2 IDE one SCSI. Windows XP Pro takes up the primary IDE and the SCSI drive. I wanted to install linux on the secondary IDE drive and have the ability to boot to whatever os. But as soon as I try to boot to finish the Debian setup I just get L 40 40 40 40 40...and on and on. This is the second time I have tryed this... before I got L 10 10 10 10... so on...

I have an AMI BIOS on a SK8N mobo and an opteron processor. I have successfully installed and duel booted Red Hat and Fedora linux before, with no problems.

I hear the problem is caused by LILO finding nothing in the MBR but I installed it onto the MBR! So Im lost... plz help :P

Thanks for you help!

Hi 0x86,

Have you tried to boot using CD1 of your Debian distro and use "rescue" mode. You will be coached to re install lilo in to primary master MBR, that is /dev/hda.
You can check again to make sure it is.
HTH

Amri

I can't boot into rescbf24 or rescue. It gives me this "Kernel panic: VFS: Unable to mount root fs on 03:05" (or 3a:05 in "rescue" mode I think) I can duel boot the other distros so whats up here?'s

One option is to install the GAG boot manager http://gag.sourceforge.net/ into MBR and lilo into your Debian IDE drive & partition. Then you can use GAG to boot either Windows or Debian, and when you choose Debian GAG will hand over the actual booting of Debian to lilo. I don't know if this will help solving your specific problem but it might be worth a try. GAG has an easy-to-use graphical configuration utility.

Anyway, preparing a Windows XP boot diskette http://www.xxcopy.com/xxcopy33.htm allows you to restore the Windows boot sector in case your MBR gets hosed after playing around with boot loaders.


Edit:

On second thought, Windows XP has its own boot manager -- maybe you should use that to dual boot between Windows and Debian. In this case also, you should install lilo into your Debian IDE drive & partition (and not into MBR).

Would it be possible to make a "boot CD"? I dont have a floppy :P... never thought I would need one... Like, one CD to boot Linux... and a CD to resore the MBR?

How would I activate the Windows Boot Manager? Install Debian first and then install Windows?

(EDIT:) In hopes that windows will detect that there is a bootable linux distro sitting there and include it...

See the Windows info here: http://support.microsoft.com/default...6559&sd=tech#9

I think the correct order is to install Windows first and Debian afterwards. If the Debian installation offers you the opton to make a boot diskette, you should always make one. It's better to be safe than sorry.

Windows might detect Debian but it cannot boot it if there's no boot loader (lilo) in the Debian partition.

The problem is I can't make a bood disket, I dont have a floppy drive... So, how do I go about making a linux boot CD?

LOL, I didn't read your earlier post carefully enough. Anyway, I still think that installing lilo into the Debian IDE drive & partition (instead of MBR) is worth a try.

If the Windows boot manager doesn't detect Debian (which it should), you can download SystemRescueCD http://www.sysresccd.org/ and install GAG from there (at the very first prompt of SystemRescueCD explore the given boot options and you'll find the option to install GAG into MBR).

Here's another thought: If you install Debian for desktop use, it may be better to use the new Sarge beta4 installer http://www.debian.org/devel/debian-installer/ instead of the Woody installer you've been using. The new installer supports newer hardware. (And, just to make things a little more complicated, the new installer defaults to use different boot loader -- not lilo but grub.)

Thanks allot 4 all your help, I think this should work... the new installer using grub, grub seems to work on my comp, and the newer hardware thing CANT be bad. Thanks!