[CLUE-Tech] LILO Boot Problem

[Randy Arabie]

On Wednesday, 12 February 2003 at  8:34:16 -0700, Jed S. Baer <thag at frii.com> wrote:
> On Wed, 12 Feb 2003 06:59:43 -0700
> Randy Arabie <randy at arabie.org> wrote:
> 
> > I think my options are:
> > 
> >   --Repartition the disk, creating smaller partitions that the bios can
> >   handle. Maybe a /, /boot, and /var (in addition to my swap).
> 
> AFAIK, the bios doesn't know squat about partitions. It knows only about
> how to get to blocks on the disk, via head/cylinder/sector mapping (or
> something like that). The mapping of partitions to areas on the disk is
> done in the partition table, and that translation is done by the HD
> drivers, before the raw read/write request goes to the BIOS.

My thought was by repartitioning I could ensure that my /boot, and all
the necessary files lilo needs to bootstrap would be within the address
range of my apparently limited BIOS.  Since I've only got a "/" and swap
partition, I have no gaurantee that the kernel-image isn't "way out
there" in some address space beyond the reach of my bios.

> My memory might be wrong here, but doesn't the P133 predate LBA? Or, to
> put it another way, maybe the HD is just too new for the BIOS? I know,
> that doesn't quite jive with your being able run normally after booting
> from floppy. But maybe the kernel is smart enough to figure it out, while
> LILO is not.

I think P133 may predate LBA, but I don't know.  I'm putting this box
together from "scrap".  The case, mobo, and processor all came together,
the rest (HD included) are spare parts I had.  I used the BIOS' HD
auto-detect, and it has NORMAL, LARGE, and LBA options.  The only
geometry that matches the label on my HD is that reported with the
NORMAL option.

The kernel is "smarter" than LILO, as I was able to format and error
check the entire disk.
-- 
Allons Rouler!
        
Randy
http://www.arabie.org/
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