Hoping someone can help a linux n00b get the ball rolling. I was kind of hoping this would all go smoothly but alas.

Mandrake v10 installation (Downloaded md5=ok burn=ok) 3 CD set
Dual Boot setup
hda = xp
hdb = mandrake

The installation goes OK and all seems well leaving everyhting as default. When i reboot i get a LILO error. "L 01 01 01 01 01 01"

Same if i boot from floppy

Tried a grub boot disk and i get "grub read error stage 2"

I end up having to reset the mbr to windows so i can get online and ask for someone more knowledgable to help me out of this.

Can anyone suggest anything or point me in the right direction ??
I am a total linux gumby but fairly good on windows. I am able to use the 'rescue' function on the first disk of the set but i dont know what to do.

welcome to LQ!!!

=)

one thing you could try is re-installing lilo from the rescue disk... to do that you just need to mount your root partition and then run lilo, telling it to use the conf in that partition...

for example (from a rescue disk):

if that still doesn't work, then you need to take a look at your lilo configuration:

when you edit the configuration, do the lilo re-install thing again...

also make sure the stuff in your BIOS is correct, make sure it's properly detecting the disk, etc...

feel free to post your lilo.conf here so we can look at it and give you feedback...

good luck...

PS: my exmaples use reiserfs as the filesystem but you might be using some other, like ext3 or xfs or something...

Thanks for the swift reply and helpful info. I've learnt alot just from the few commands you've given me.

From the mandrake rescue disk I successfully made the dir:
mkdir /mnt/temp

when i try to run the line:
mount -t ext2 /dev/hda1 /mnt/temp (tmp=whatever)

I get the error:
"wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on dev/hda1 or too many mounted file systems"
I got the ext2 bit from typing lsparts at rescue prompt.

I managed to open the lilo.conf but have no idea how to post a screenshot or must i write out the contents and retype them for you?

BTW when i try to edit the lilo.conf file the keyboard seems way off. If i try to type the letter 'f' the cursor just jumps around to a different place.

if you were able to get into the lilo.conf file on the disk then you were able to mount the partition somehow... i'm guessing you resolved the problem you were having mounting it??

i'm not sure about the problem you're having editing the file... are you using vi?? have you used it before?? it can be tricky at first... check-out some intros to vi:

http://www.google.com/linux?hl=en&lr...=Google+Search

basically, you need to place yourself in "insert" mode by hitting the "i" key... then when you're done editing you can exit the "insert" mode with the ESC key... and you can issue the ":wq" command to save and exit...

but if you don't wanna edit yet, and just wanna copy the file's contents to post them here, you can "cat" it's contents onto a floppy, for example... and then open the file on the floppy from windows...

example:

(once you've mounted the partition with the lilo.conf in /mnt/whatever)

that cat command cats the content of the lilo.conf and redirects the output onto a text file called whatever.txt on the floppy... the file whatever.txt doesn't need to exist before you do that...

Excellent. That will help alot. Heres where i am at. I reinstalled mandrake and asked it to install lilo in the mbr on hda

successfully mounted drive by:

mount -t vfat /dev/hda1 /mnt/temp

The lilo -r command was not accepted. I cannot locate the lilo.conf anymore

When i played with the mount option in rescue mode i noticed this at some point if it helps.

/dev/hda1 /mnt/win_c type vfat
/dev/hda5 /mnt/win_d type vfat

I am DETERMINED to get this running so please bare with me. I learn fast and just the commands you've given me so far have opened other doors.

for linux just use the "reiserfs" filesystem for the root partition when you are given the option to choose how you want to format...

let me give you an example to help clear things up a bit:

in this example, you have two hard disks... one is the IDE primary master and the other is the IDE primary slave...

on the primary master (/dev/hda) you have windows... windows is taking up the entire disk, so there's basically just one partition (/dev/hda1)... wheather the partition is FAT32 or NTFS doesn't matter right now...

you want linux on the primary slave (/dev/hdb) disk...

let's say that /dev/hdb is a 40GB disk... so when it comes time to partition, you choose to make a 39GB root (/) partition and a 1GB swap partition... linux likes using a swap partition instead of a swap file unlike windows...

you could choose to make the swap partition an extended one, but let's keep things simple and make them both primary partitions if we can...

you choose reiserfs as the filesystem for the root partition...

(remember this is all example)

so when you're done formatting the partitions on /dev/hdb you end-up with something that looks like this:

/dev/hda1 = Windows

/dev/hdb1 = Linux (/)

/dev/hdb2 = Linux (Swap)

okay so when it comes time to install the bootloader, you choose to install it on the MBR of /dev/hda... the idea being that as soon as the BIOS tries to boot the primary master disk, the bootloader will take over... the objective is to configure the bootloader so that it will let you choose between Windows and Linux... so the boot loader must be aware that Windows is on /dev/hda1 and Linux is on /dev/hdb1... i believe that mandrake's installer usually manages to figure this stuff out on it's own, but sometimes you might need to adjust stuff manually i guess... if everything goes well you shouldn't even need to use the rescue cd at all...

if your /dev/hdb1 partition has been formatted with the reiserfs filesystem, you'd mount it from the rescue disk like this:

if your /dev/hdb1 partition has been formatted with the ext3 filesystem, you'd mount it from the rescue disk like this:

the "-t" option for the "mount" command simply specifies the filesystem you wanna mount... one doesn't mount "disks" or "partitions", one mounts "filesystems"...

the "vfat" type is used to mount FAT16 (such as floppies) and FAT32 filesystems such as some Windows... linux can access vfat partitions but it will almost NEVER use vfat as the filesystem for itself, for technical reasons...

try going through the install again using my example as a guide, and then let me know your new situation... i will continue to help you as best i can, it's great that you are so determined, most people would have given-up long ago... it sounds like you have the type of mentality that makes a great linux user/admin...

hang in there!!

good luck...

Man thanks a heap for that. I've learnt more in this thread than i have anywhere else.

I was thinking i had a dud CD somewhere amongst the three so i did a test. I got rid of windows and now have just Mandrake on the system and nothing else. Seems to work fine now.

Now i just have to figure out how to get the USB adsl modem running so i can get in here from home.

Thanks for your help win32sux !! Its been a blast.