linux 8.0 won't boot without floppy disk.
 

Hello one and all,
I'm a unix sys admin looking after Solaris, aIX and now Linux.
(Yup - Linux newbie :newbie: )
I've just completed my first linux install only to find it won't boot
from harddisk. I need to insert a linux bootable floppy disk to
bring the server up.

I had a go at setting up RAID1 on each filesystem and it appears to have worked, but like i say i can only boot up from floppy.

I have /boot mounted on md1 and / on md0.
Does /boot have to be on /md0 ?

What else would potentially stop linux from booting automatically?

Any help grateully received. :D

Regards - Johnm

Hi Jmac

is there any other os existing in your system?
if yes then may be you have to change the boot loader.

else try using the lba32 mode( u mite have chosen linear)

or try to boot once again with cd and upgrade and install the boot loader in the master boot ..


hope it helps u
bi
kimi

why did you post this in "member intro" surely the name speaks for itself... moved to Linux - Newbie

many thanks Chris - you're doing a good job.

Ah, the great AIX to Linux migration.

You are leaving us a bit in the dark. Are you using grub or lilo? What happens when it won't boot (nothing?)? Is it an i386 or perhaps a PPC. A couple of old RS6000 machines we use require a type 41, PPC PReP Boot partition to which the kernel is dd'ed, or a dd'ed floppy works fine too.

Personally I would suspect the bios cannot comprehend the raid partition in order to read the kernel. How about setting up a "normal" parition for / and /boot and raiding everything else? In other words, keep / small and mount /usr, /var, and so on which are raided. You can use LVM to break up the raids into filesystems.

Hi There,
many thanks one and all.
Fsbooks - the probem was with the raid partitions. apparently HP smartstart sets the bios to do hardware raid and I had raided up / and /boot which it couldn't understand.

I rebuilt these partitions and it's running like a dream now.

Many thanks.

jmcmillan,

I am trying to do something similar with my machine. I am trying to set up a raid level 1 between 2 60 gig drives. If the /root isn't raided and then if one drive fails how does the raid help? I mean the system won't boot if the other drive doesn't have a /root right? I am trying to do this with SuSE 8.2 but YaST2 won't let me raid the /boot partition.

This is what I have drawn up ...
hda1 = type=fd /boot ??? or something else?
hda2 = type=82 /swap
hda3 = type=fd /
hda4 = type=fd /var

hdb1 = type=fd /boot ??? or something else?
hdb2 = type=82
hdb3 = type=fd /
hdb4 = type=fd /var

md0 = hda1 and hdb1
md1 = hda3 and hda3
md2 = hda4 and hdb4

If you could help me perfect this I would appreciate it.

Thank you,