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Re: [TCLUG:7674] Boot problems



On Thu, 19 Aug 1999, Hanson, Bob C. (PC) wrote:

> I can boot with the floppy drive but not to the hard drive. If I let the
> system boot to the HD the only thing that comes up are 0's and 1's scrolling
> down the screen. I reinstalled and reformatted the system 3 times with the
> same problem each time.
> 
> System specs are as follows. AMD K6-2 450, SeaGate 8.6GB drive, 128MB ram,
> 3Com 10/100 NIC, Matrox G200 Video Card and a Micro-Star MS-5169
> motherboard.

I'm going to take a pot shot at this problem. Is it possible that you made
only one partition for your Linux system? If so, you may be running into
the old 1024-cylinder limit imposed by LILO. (Someone please correct me if
I'm wrong on this.)

If this is your problem, you need to create at least one more partition
containing your /boot directory below the 1024th cylinder. Typically this
is accomplished by creating a small /boot parition (5-10 MB would probably
suffice) or a more aggressive partitioning strategy including separate /,
/usr, /usr/local/, /home, /var, /etc, and so one (you may not need that
many or you may want more). In the latter partitioning structure, a /
partition of 100-200 MB would be perfectly sufficient and would contain
/boot thus ensuring that the 1024-cylinder problem is avoided.

Of course, I could be completely wrong about this. :-)

-Tim

--
Timothy Wilson       | "The faster you  |  Check out:
Henry Sibley H.S.    |  go, the shorter | http://slashdot.org/
W. St. Paul, MN, USA |  you are."       | http://linux.com/
wilson@chem.umn.edu  |       -Einstein  | http://www.mn-linux.org/