I have at least 4 working linuxes in my box(different distros). There is nothing else but Linux. Booting is via grub(MBR), but if one selects Slack 13, then you get to the Slack root partition, which boots via Lilo.
Anyway, this was working fine until a few days ago. No new HW has been added and no reconfiguration has been done. Slack13 is kinda full(some 98%), but it's been this way for some time now.
The problem is sometimes, I get a 'No bootable partition found'. Yet, perhaps right after that, it may boot ok. So it looks like something is wrong, but not yet fatal. How can I diagnose and possibly fix it?

P.S. There is a BIOS option to select which disk to boot from, but if you get a 'no bootable partition found', it does not work either

Hi,

Your BIOS selection would be for the disk not a partition.

I would perform a fsck on the filesystem for Slackware. You can do this by using the install cd/dvd or booting 'single' to perform the checks.
If your not experiencing issues with other partitions on the disk then the fsck should repair the filesystem. If you do have other hdd issues then use the manufactures hdd diagnostics to check the disk out.

If that doesn't work, I would test the hard drive. You could download a Linux LiveCD of whatever distro you like best. I had an Ubuntu live disk sitting around and did it that way. Most distros have smartmontools installed.

If it comes down to that, do a search on how to run tests using smartmontools or smartctl (a tool in the smartmontools package). It was overwhelming for me but once I got it figured out, it was simple. If you run a test and it fails, you have a bad drive... be sure to run the test a couple of times to be sure it has the same results. All I had to do was run a couple of fast tests.

I would recommend to use Hitachi Drive Fitness Test to test your harddisk. Despite its name it will test harddisks from any manufacturer and it is much smaller then a live-cd.

So basically there is consensus that something seems to be wrong with the disk -and probably the first disk, since this looks like MBR having the problem. Slack 13 is on the second disk. I will do a disk check. One thing I did not mention: I had some older ide drives with older linux distros. These were damaged during an M/B failure. The point is I can mount most them alright from other distros, but not boot them. fsck will
NOT be able to do anything with at least one partition (reiser3) which is damaged beyond repair(or at least beyond any of my efforts)

Hi,
Now we're getting a better picture. You should perform the diagnostics on that 'SECOND' disk. I don't believe you are having a bootload problem with the 'MBR' on the initial disk. You are selecting the system on a second drive that has the lilo bootloader on the superblock for Slackware. Check the disk, then the filesystem on that disk/partition.

Different problem, should be different thread. Not even associative to this one. Apparent bootloader issues with each disk. Probably booted via another bootload.

I do suggest that you look at 'How to Ask Questions the Smart Way' so that in the future your queries provide information which will aid us in diagnosis of the problem.