problem with backtrack

raffigee · 03-08-2006, 12:10 PM

Does anyone have a suggestion ??

cwwilson721 · 03-08-2006, 12:20 PM

Do this as root :

Code:

fdisk -l

That will tell you what your partions are. Your windows partition will usually be the first partition on the first disk: /dev/hda1 or /dev/sda1. The other should be your Linux one.

Substitute those values for the ones you have in /etc/lilo.conf.
Then run lilo again.
Rebbot
Let us know

raffigee · 03-09-2006, 02:14 PM

fdisk -l tells me:

hda1
hda2

leaving "current" for linux and "hda1" for windows works now
but for some reason when i replace the word current by "hda2" running lilo tells me "number not valid"

i don't understand why but it works so why bother ??

thanks a lot !!!

Mr_C · 03-09-2006, 11:58 PM

do us a favour and run this command 'fdisk -l' as root and post what it reveals so we can tell you what to put in your /etc/lilo.conf

Mr_C · 03-10-2006, 12:04 AM

wow, I just clicked submit and I see several replies....cwwilson721 I see you have the situation under control...lol.
raffigee you should clean up your config, it should look something like this

image = /boot/vmlinuz
root = /dev/hda2
label = Linux
read-only

other = /dev/hda1
label = WindowsXP
table = /dev/hda

cwwilson721 · 03-10-2006, 12:37 AM

I think the OP has /dev/hda2 aliased as 'current' (Must have done some bizzare, non Slack stuff there.), but it seems to be working, so....

Mr_C · 03-10-2006, 09:55 AM

true, it the 'have to look pretty and perfect' part of me.......

Thasaidon · 09-02-2007, 02:04 AM

@raffigee
I'm trying to install Backtrack on my Laptop next to windows XP.
XP is running on hda1 and I have about 4Gig of unpartitioned space reserved for Backtrack.

Could you tell me what you did to install backtrack?

Road_map · 09-02-2007, 05:35 AM

If I remember correctly, BackTrack Installer can't work with unallocated space. So you need to make at least 2 partitions (/ and swap) in your unallocated space, using fdisk from BackTrack live CD (or another partitioning tool) and then:
For a new harddisk (without any partitions):

Code:

# mkswap /dev/hda2
# swapon /dev/hda2
# mkfs -t ext3 /dev/hda1
# reboot

and now you can use BackTrack Installer.

Of course, you must change these commands to fit your harddisk partitions.

Thasaidon · 09-03-2007, 02:58 AM

Thanx, I found a howto (pdf) and followed it to the letter.
However, for some reason, Backtrack does not copy the contents of /boot to the appropriate partition.
So when I boot the Laptop, I get the error, "No operating system found"

So I booted the live-cd again and manually copied the /boot contents to the appropriate partition.

This time everything seemed to work. However, when Backtrack finally booted, I'm getting the error:
"atkbd.c: Spurious ACK on isa0060/serio0. Some program might be trying to access hardware directly."
This error "loops" and is just filling up my screen. The only way to end it is to power-down the laptop.

I have (not yet) installed Lilo or Grub because I first wanted to test if it was all working before I installed either one of them.

I'll try some other possible solutions I found on the net and see what happens.

Thanx in advance

SCerovec · 09-03-2007, 08:04 AM

[partition1][partition2]
is in mos cases to linux translated as:
<hda1=[partition1]> <hda2 <hda5[partition2]> >
in other words:
the first partition is commonly a primary partition and the seckond one is commonly a virtual partiton embeded in an extended partition

Now You probably don't have this setup either, it's most likely:
<hda1=NTFS><hda2<hda5=SWAP><hda6=EXT2>>
So You should boot Windows from hda1
and Linux from hda6 if the above is true.
Just in case please provide the output of:

Code:

mount

Code:

cat /proc/partitions

and

Code:

fdisk -l /dev/hda

And we shall see

Thasaidon · 09-03-2007, 09:32 AM

I take it you want to see the output of those commands while booted with the live-cd?
If so, the live cd mounts the partions as...

Code:

dev/hda1= /mnt/hda1 = NTFS
dev/hda2= /mnt/hda2 = Linux (active partition)
dev/hda3= /mnt/hda3 = Linuxswap
dev/hda4= /mnt/hda4 = Linux

At least that's what I remember...
I already fdisk-ed the drive again to start new, so I'll let you know when I got things as they were (or working ;-)

Thasaidon · 09-03-2007, 09:40 AM

Well, I fdisked the drive again, and installed Backtrack again.
I did all this (again) according to the "manual", and this time it all worked...
I'm not sure why it's working now, because I did the same as I did before.

So... backtrack is working now. Time to get grub into place so I can create my winXP Backtrack dualboot.

Thanx for the help.