whoops...
i just finished installing ubuntu linux for the 4th time (i think) in the last 20 hours. everything in installation went fine up to the point of configuring GRUB, which i didn't really want to do because i had a perfectly fine-working lilo dual-booting slack 10 and xp as it was. after getting a bit more used to ubuntu and getting sick of all the problems i was having i ended up scrapping the entire slack and installing ubuntu. my current setup is something like this:
hda1 xp (ntfs)
hdb1 ubuntu /
hdb2 swap
hdb3 mp3s (vfat)
hdb4 empty
looking back, if i'd stopped the ubuntu installer from putting grub on i'd probably have been fine, just had to reboot into slackware and edit my lilo.conf file to include ubuntu--no problem. but instead i decided to go out, do lots of drugs and come back and find a more creative way to fix it, which in this case meant reinstalling the damn os several more times.
i'm not quite familiar exactly what happens when i used to select windows from lilo aside from the fact that it started loading (looks for windows' boot.ini?), so i'm concerned that with all the grub and lilo fighting over things last night i may have messed up something in my mbr and thats why even if i edit lilo.conf to include windows in the menu it fails to load. i'm not sure what this means, but i'm afraid it might lend something to that fear:
Code:
# fdisk /dev/hda
The number of cylinders for this disk is set to 4865.
There is nothing wrong with that, but this is larger than 1024,
and could in certain setups cause problems with:
1) software that runs at boot time (e.g., old versions of LILO)
2) booting and partitioning software from other OSs
(e.g., DOS FDISK, OS/2 FDISK)
i get a similar error for /dev/hdb, but 77545 cylinders instead of 4765
if windows were completely unsalvageable, i have about 5 gigabytes of data that i'd like to save from it before starting windows over from scratch, but when i try to mount hda1 i get:
Code:
s# modprobe ntfs
ubuntu:/home/eds# mount -t ntfs /dev/hda1 /mnt/win-c
mount: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/hda1,
or too many mounted file systems
is this the same problem?
----
after doing a little work with lilo.conf and running lilo i get this message:
Code:
# lilo
Warning: '/proc/partitions' does not match '/dev' directory structure.
Name change: '/dev/dm-0' -> '/dev/evms/hda1'
Warning: The boot sector and map file are on different disks.
upon booting i have a menu with windows xp as an option but selecting it takes me to a grub console, apparently left over from a previous install. i don't know how to use the grub shell. if i could delete that and generate a new map file for lilo... i don't know, i'm just really overwhelmed right now.
thanks in advance for help! i am digging my own grave!
