Hi folks, I'm having problems running Mandrake Linux 10.0. Well, I have everything installed and most of it works. I have Mandrake on one hard drive and Microsoft on the other. Now, when I was installing, I knew that I had Windows on the "hda" hard drive, and I didn't want it on that one. I wanted it on the empty hard drive that I just installed, that must have been known as "hdc". So, I did the "Auto Allocate" option on the "hdc" hard drive so Linux could have that whole hard drive, while Windows occupies the other. The rest of the installation went well, and I understood most of it. When I got to the Dual Boot option, I selected "hdc" in the scroll down menu, because thats what hard drive Linux will be on. I don't know if this is correct (there was also a "hdc1", "hdc2", etc...) so I need you're help with this first. So, when I rebooted, I went to BIOS, put the correct boot sequence back in (Floppy, Hard Drive, CDROM) and then rebooted to see how it worked. When I rebooted, it went rightto Windows, so I shut down the computer, put the cable from SATA 1 on the motherboard connecting to my Linux hard drive, and the SATA 2 cable going to my Windows hard drive. I booted up, and the Linux screen came up. You get ten seconds to choose what you want to use (Linux, Windows, Failsafe, etc...) and I chose "Linux". After this, it checks my hardware. This is where I *think* the problems come up. This is what shows up:


VFS: Can't find ext3 filesystem on dev hdc1.
Mount: Error 22 mounting ext3 flag defaults.
Well, retrying without the option flags.
VFS: Can't find ext3 filesystem on dev hdc1.
Mount: Error 22 mounting ext3
Well, retrying read-only without and flag
VFS: Can't find ext3 filesystem on dev hdc1.
Mount: Errpr 22 mounting ext3.
pivotroot: pivot_root (/sysroot,/sysroot, initrd) Failed: 2
Remounting devfs at correct place if necessary
Mounted devfs on /dev
Freeing unused kernal memory: 272k Freed
Kernal Panic: No init found. Try passing init= option to kernal.


The last line seems to be the highlighted problem to me, but I am completely new to Linux so I do not know. Any help is appreciated!

if you were installing linux on its own harddrive, why did you choose to do dual boot?

i think that seems to be the problem

Huh? Don't I need to dualboot if I have two hard drives and want to keep Windows on the other? I think I seriously screwed up in the installation of it, so I want to uninstall it and give it another try. Can you tell me how to do this? Oh, and before I forget, when I first started trying to install it on one hard drive with the other unplugged, during the installation of Mandrake, after you click "I Agree" a different step would come up saying "Found VIA Technologies.....Driver" "imm" "ppa". And then below that were the choices "Yes" "No" and "Hardware Information". Clicking "No" always caused an error no matter what, and clicking "Yes" just brings you to a driver list. So after that I hooked up my Windows hard drive too, and rebooted. Then when I clicked "Agree" the next time, it went past the driver part and went right to security. The installation then went smooth from there.

my bad i was thinking of having 2 harddrives and only having one connected at one time so connecting the windows one up when u want windows and the linux when u want linux...wasn't thinking of slave + master

this is what i think of the problem, when linux installs it formats the harddrive to a filesystem, mandrake uses ext3... so im thinking that maybe it did not format the drive correctly. what about trying a reinstall, or maybe someone else has a better suggestion

I think i understand where you might have gone wrong, basically if you want to dual boot both OS but you want them both installed to seperate hard disks, you had it right all the way, but i think you were trying to say that when it asked you about the dual boot option, it was asking you where you want to install the dual boot menu (lilo) to. You need to install it to the boot sector of your first hard disk, the one windows is on, and then you should leave your drives connected the way they are when you install. (windows first drive, linux second drive)

I dare say your errors during boot time are because, when you installed linux, your second hard disk was called hdc1, as it was the second drive(hdc is the first one), however when you disconnected your windows drive, your linux drive became hdc as it was the only one there. And basically all your linux system is build thinking that hdc1 is where it will find all the stuff it needs.

That may sound kind of trivial, but i hope you get what i mean.

So basically just reinstall the way you did in the first place, with windows drive plugged in, install everything the same way, your linux drive will be hdc1, however when you come to the part about the bootloader(lilo) remember you must install it to your first hard disk, which will be your windows (hdc) drive.

(im not linux expert either, but i think this is whats happened)
Hope this helps

Stuart has it pretty close to right. When you installed Mandrake, Windows was on hda, and Mandrake was installed to hdc (per your report). When you saw no boot menu following restart, you changed the drive Mandrake is installed on to be the first hard disk (hda), but the boot loader was looking for Linux on the other disk (hdc).

To fix this, put your disks back in their proper order (Windows on the first disk) then run the Mandrake installation CD again in upgrade mode. When you get to the boot-loader part, direct the installer to put lilo in the MBR of hda (the disk with WIndows). When you restart, all should be well.

HTH,

Ok, thanks fellas! I'll try this out soon, and get back to you with the results! Thanks!

You have it set up exactly as I do, MS on one drive hda and Mandrake on another hdc. When you install the boot manager you have to put it on hda, it works every time. There are other ways of doing this but why bother. You can always replace the MBR if you really want to at a later date but you probably never will.

He can also boot with the mandrake cd's and re-install the bootloader/mbr.

Of course you need to boot the cd in the rescue mode to do that.

OMG original post 1 simple problem

DONT BOOT HDC directly using bios
boot hda as normal where windows was and as long as you add boot loader during istall you see a list of operating systems.
Because setup detected how you system was organised it adds it to hda as it knew that is where you boot from