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Old 01-09-2004, 01:54 AM   #1
oberonix
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Help with mandrake booting


I am having some serious issues getting my mandrake to work. Some funky stuff is going on with the bootloader from what I can tell. I have tried installing to /hd0 and it says something about it would corrupt or destroy it. I've tried installing to the MBR as I was recommended and it doesn work.

The reasons it doesnt work is something im really unfamiliar with eveytime I get a bootloader of some kind installed it always just prints this to the screen:

|beos|beos

where the 0 is a square block and the | has a smal line sticking out like 2 pixels from the left side in the center.


I have no clue what that is, and have tried just about everything in the rescue utility.

please help!
Scott
 
Old 01-09-2004, 02:13 AM   #2
nightjar
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Let me know what and where are u installing Mandrake. Have you a windoze partition? Is this the only OS?
What version of Mandrake?
Whats are the partitions? (/, /usr. /var,etc)
 
Old 01-09-2004, 05:59 PM   #3
oberonix
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Mandrake problem

Mandrake 9.2
its a new computer completely, no existing anything I just selected the format entire drive option, didn't do them myself so I have no idea what the partitions look like at the moment.
 
Old 01-09-2004, 08:02 PM   #4
nightjar
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I suggest u this steps
1) boot from the CD another time
2) you will go through diferents menues
3) Choose advance installation
4) When u arrive to the partiton section select and create the following partitons
/ (and select a size) (i use 10 GB)
/usr (4 GB)
/var (500-1000 MB)
/home (in this partition will be your select programs but only the initialization and the software that you want to download not to share) (around 10 GB)
/swap (green color = twice the RAM)

You can select the order of that partition and also change the dimension of its.
When you finished with this step linux must formats the HD. Format all.
5) Install your desires packages and good luck !!!
Linux is a good choice
 
Old 01-13-2004, 09:57 AM   #5
oberonix
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still didnt work

The partition thing seemed to help as the bootloader had no problems installing this time it looked like.

It still gives me the same error message though, and won't boot.

A couple of questions I found while doing the partitioning,

What format should I have formatted them in? (ext3, linux native, etc..)
What partition should I have installed the bootloader on? I tried a couple.
Do I need a boot partition? I tried this also at one point.


Thanks,
Scott
 
Old 01-13-2004, 10:50 AM   #6
bigjohn
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Which bootloader are you trying to install? because the hd0 thing you mentioned earlier is grub.

Personally I've never had any problems with mandrake, but I also go for all the default stuff to start with.

I.E. whatever it offers I just "OK" it, when it gets to the package selections part, I just pick all the "user" type stuff down the left hand side of the dialogue box and just kde and gnome (though I've never really looked into gnome itself, but it's been handy having the gtk stuff installed as some app's require it.

I've only had to do a "proper" partitioning thing since I've had multiple installs of linux - at the moment I run mandrake 9.1, gentoo 1.4 and I still have eckspee (my partner won't use linux, she's a teacher and they've only got windows at her work). In theory, at least, If you only install mandrake (i.e. no windows) then you shouldn't really need seperate partitions etc.

Though even now, I only use boot (which is used by both distro's), root (both distro's have there own root partition) and swap (which is common for both distro's). But that's mainly because it didn't matter what I tried, I couldn't get gentoo installed without having boot, root and swap (which is the basic default for gentoo).

I also have always used lilo for my bootloader, because the differing naming convention of grub confused the hell out of me - I found I prefered to go with lilo, because it retains the hda1 hda2 hda3 etc etc naming system. I understand that grub's just (if not more so) clever, but I just couldnt get my head round it.

If your system has a floppy drive, you could always boot from the cd the first time, then go into the "mandrake control centre" and make a boot floppy - at least that would get you up and running until you can work out what's wrong (but if you do, don't forget to change the BIOS settings so it boots from floppy first, then if you've tried to do a modification, you just eject the floppy, reboot and see if your install starts without the floppy).

regards

John
 
Old 01-13-2004, 12:27 PM   #7
nightjar
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I'm in agreement with bigjohn
I also prefer lilo and use journalist as format
Personally use Mandrake since 7.x and never find a big trouble with it
 
Old 01-14-2004, 12:10 AM   #8
oberonix
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bootloader

yeah I tried lilo mostly, but once i tried grub just to see if that would fix it. Sadly the computer doesnt currently have a floppy in it, so I might have to install one in it to see if it works. I'm trying to make the computer a server type deal for my website so I don't have to leave on the beast all night long and put the extra wear and tear on it. Plus it gives me a good excuse to try out linux which I know I will switch to once I figure everything out. So I will go ahead and try the floppy thing when I have a chance I suppose.

Other notes I tried the journalized and the default stuff also, but no combination seems to get past my problem, I'd be really interested to know what the error message itself is.

Thanks for all the help,
Scott
 
Old 01-14-2004, 12:56 AM   #9
bigjohn
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Well, I haven't a clue on the error, because the common one with lilo that has failed to install correctly is a screen full of LILILILILILILILILILIILILILILIILILO or sometimes LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL.

Ive also heard that if grub is installed incorrectly you can also get a screen full of "GRUB".

Anyway, the first thing to try would be to boot from the cd, when it tell you "press enter to contine installing" and "press F1 (or whatever it tells you) for advanced options" then press the "F" key that they want, and when you end up with the screen there should be a message about various options, you will want to type "rescue" (no quotes), then read the instructions, and using the arrow keys, choose the reinstall bootloader (it may say lilo or grub rather than bootloader, but whichever, that's the facility that you want) after you've done that, remove the cd and try reboot, in theory, you should then have a working bootloader.

regards

John
 
Old 01-14-2004, 12:58 AM   #10
nightjar
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Then ...good luck !!! ))
 
Old 01-14-2004, 01:32 AM   #11
jschiwal
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Since BEOS is an operating system, Something tells me that the drive had beos installed on it before.

Also, you said you were trying to install to hd0. Do you mean /dev/hda?
Boot up to the rescue system and look at your /etc/lilo.conf file. What does the boot= line say? If you run lilo, is that successful? If there is an error in lilo.conf, or a partition in lilo.conf can't be accessed, then the lilo loader may not have been written to the mbr.
 
Old 01-14-2004, 10:05 AM   #12
oberonix
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I tried the rescue reinstall bootloader and it didnt work, now I was chatting in the linux channels on irc and one guy told me the error message was that it was trying to boot an os that had been on the drive before (win2k).

So my current theory after all the chatting last night is that since I get the weird message when trying to install a bootloader most of the time, my bootloader just flat out isnt installing

Being the newbie that I am I have no idea what you mean by dev/ or how to access the lilo.conf. If I could access the lilo configurations I might be able to determine whether or not it works.

Something that I will try when I have some time hopefully later today is to rewipe the drive, I thought I had completely wiped it with killdisk but maybe it missed something and thus that old os tries to boot up. If that doesn't work I'm gonna goo with the good old floppy boot disk to get it running until I find the problem.

Thanks,
Scott
 
Old 01-17-2004, 12:11 PM   #13
jschiwal
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If don't believe that lilo was able to install in your boot drive, or the drive indicated in your boot= line is incorrect or the root drive is not found. The mbr portion of lilo is actually very small, less than 256 bytes.
What error message did you get after you typed lilo. If there is a mistake in your /etc/lilo.conf, such as syntax, or lilo cannot locate an indicated drive, or file, then lilo will not write over the MBR and you will still have your old MBR, which may presently be pointing to an old BEOS loader program.

Last edited by jschiwal; 01-17-2004 at 12:23 PM.
 
  


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