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Distribution: RedHat Linux 9.0, SuSE 9.0, Mandrake 9.2
Posts: 35
Rep:
Problem in booting RH Linux 9
Hi,
I have a dual-boot machine with Windows 2000 & RH Linux 9 installed. Everything was working fine until, I found that 3GB space was unallocated in the windows partition, so I formatted it as NTFS. The disc space which I formatted was under Windows partition and was unallocated before formatting. I formatted it from the "Computer Management" utility under "Administrative Tools". Also, from Disk Management utility showed the 3GB free space under Windows partition. I had kept 5GB space for Linux partition.
Then, when I restarted my machine, I was taken to the grub> prompt instead of the option to select the OS (Linux/DOS).
Then I managed to boot into Windows 2000 using the following set of commands.
Windows 2000 was in hda1.
Also root (hdx,y) gave me the following for different combinations of x,y
0,0 Filesystem type is FAT Partition type 0xc
0,1 Filesystem type is unknown Partition type 0xf
0,2 Error 22: No such partition
0,3 Error 22: No such partition
0,4 Filesystem type is FAT Partition type 0xb
0,5 Filesystem type is FAT Partition type 0xb
1,y gave Error 21: Selected disk doesnt exist. (for diff values of f.)
Distribution: Lots of distros in the past, now Linux Mint
Posts: 748
Rep:
You start over. I hope you have a backup of your Linux system. MS Windows doesn't recognize partitions other than windows ones (neither does most of the "fix-it" software for windows). The unallocated space was your Linux system. When you formatted it, you erased Linux. Grub is still there, but only the smallest part of grub that's in the MBR. Because grub doesn't have anything to work with (the grub files were in your Linux partition) you get that error.
About the only thing I can suggest is sending MS an unhappy email about their lack of support for other filesystems. I doubt it will do much good, though. It's just too bad that a company that makes billions a year, and has billions in the bank, can't seem to come up with the resources to make their software compatible with other popular software.
I had always had trouble with grub, It isn't very nice to me. When that happened to me I booted with the redhat disk, went into recovery mode then edited the /etc/lilo.conf with emacs then save it. Type lilo then hit return
I can't help you any more as i don't know how you partitioned your drive.
Distribution: RedHat Linux 9.0, SuSE 9.0, Mandrake 9.2
Posts: 35
Original Poster
Rep:
Problem in booting RH Linux 9
Hi Scott,
The unallocated space was your Linux system.
I had checked it through a utility provided by RH Linux 9, Disk Management (I don't remember the name, ). The disk space (3GB) in question was displayed as an unused part under Windows partition. The Linux partition (5GB) was in a separate partition.
I'd boot up with a linux recovery CD (maybe you can switch to a console from a redhat recovery boot) - I usually use a knoppix cd - and then use linux fdisk to look around
and see if there is a likely partition that my be your missing 5g one. Redhat 9 normally uses partition labels (not /dev/hd*) to find the partitions (man e2label) - so the partition label must be nuked - hope the partition isn't as well. The root partition is nomally labelled / and the boot partition is normally labelled /boot
Well you have created a new partition and thrown off grub. It needs to know where the root partition is to load the second stage. Thats why you only get the grub prompt. As you have found out grub numbers all found partitions starting at zero.
You will need to edit the grub.conf and reinstall grub to the MBR. Boot the 1st CD to rescue mode. This should mount your root partition at /mnt/sysimage.
execute command
chroot /mnt/sysimage
To see your parititions
fdisk -l
You will need to edit the grub.conf file using a console text editor like vi. change the file to reflect the new configuration
Then run:
grub-install
You are correct you didn't overwrite linux. Windows will say its an unknown partition and leave it alone.
Distribution: RedHat Linux 9.0, SuSE 9.0, Mandrake 9.2
Posts: 35
Original Poster
Rep:
Couldn't resist the temptation of re-installing Linux on my machine. I went ahead with it and this time I chose LILO instead of GRUB & created a boot disk too. And default OS as DOS. Now, the problem is when I boot my machine from the floppy, I am able to boot into Linux with no problems. Now the worst part is When I boot from anywhere else but the Floppy I get "GRUB _" on my screen (take note this is not the grub > prompt else booting into Windows would have been easy). Now kindly help me boot Windows too.
Distribution: RedHat Linux 9.0, SuSE 9.0, Mandrake 9.2
Posts: 35
Original Poster
Rep:
I did edit the /etc/lilo.conf file and checked the boot= line, and then edited added lba32 instead of linear, made it compact, and set a delay=50, saved the file, ran lilo and re-booted the machine. Everything is fine as before. Good to see the OSes co-exist on the same machine.
I am so happy that I can't stop crying. I am laughing though my tears.
something else that may help you is to set dma on your drives. Now that you have lilo you might as well do this. I dont know how to use grub (as I said in a previous post). This will help in watching a dvd. Stop it jumping. To do this you need to find out what the device name of your drive is.
IDEPort -- Master/slave -- Device
---------------------------------
1 master /dev/hda
1 slave /dev/hdb
2 master /dev/hdc
2 slave /dev/hdd
3 master /dev/hde
3 slave /dev/hdf
4 master /dev/hdg
4 slave /dev/hdh
type eject /dev/hdc or something to test this.
Modifications to /etc/modules.conf
--------------------------------------
Start by backing up your original /etc/modules.conf. Then add the following line to /etc/modules.conf:
alias scsi_hostadapter ide-scsi
Note that depending on your distribution, the line might be required to look like this instead:
alias scsi_cd ide-scsi
I've never seen it necessary, but there are those that say the following is sometimes also a necessary addition to /dev/hdc:
options ide-scsi ignore=hdc
Don't include the preceding line unless you can't get your CDRW to work without it.
Modifications to /etc/lilo.conf
--------------------------------
Start by backing up your original /etc/lilo.conf. Note that lilo.conf has several images, each of which can be booted. In each boot image you wish to recognize the device, check lilo.conf to see if it has an append= line. It might look something like this:
append=" devfs=mount quiet"
Because each image can have only one append= statement, you must append hdc=ide-scsi to the existing statement, like this:
append=" devfs=mount quiet hdc=ide-scsi"
In the preceding, please remember to substitute hda, hdb, hdd, etc. for hdc as appropriate for the device.
If a boot image does not have an existing append statement, add the following line to the boot image.
add the following line to /etc/modules.conf:
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