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Switch247
08-31-2004, 05:21 PM
i just recently installed Slackware 10.0, and have had some problems in setting it up. install over network, install over ethernet, install some packages from floppy, got the disk partitioned, and now everyhthing works ok once i get it booted. Herein lies my Problem. according to my BIOS, I have an invalid partition table. freezes the boot right there, cold. BUT if i boot from the slackware boot disk, mount root as /dev/hda2, and let it go, it works just fine.
kind of a hassle to make sure the floppy is in the drive, and then the kernel is so slow to unpack...
Jake
JohnT
08-31-2004, 05:33 PM
Is Slackware the only OS on the drive?
according to my BIOS, I have an invalid partition table. freezes the boot right there
....................
BUT if i boot from the slackware boot disk, mount root as /dev/hda2, and let it go, it works just fine.
There is something wrong here. If BIOS stops you from booting, you can't boot from floppy.
My guess is there is something wrong with your bootloader.
Boot from floppy, and post your /etc/lilo.conf or /boot/grub/menu.lst
Also, what is the exact message you get when booting stops?
Switch247
09-02-2004, 09:30 AM
Yes, slack is the only OS on the drive. If I dont have the bios set to boot from floppy, then it complains about a invalid partition table on primary master, aka hda. I used the linux fdisk utility, adn followed the slack directions to install.
Jake
I wrote:If BIOS stops you from booting, you can't boot from floppy. Please forget about this stupid answer. I don't know what I was thinking about, of course you can boot from floppy if hd is faulty... :o
saikee
09-03-2004, 09:14 AM
There is a possibility that your /dev/hda2 has NOT been made bootable.
Just boot up your Slack as usual and use cfdisk to make it bootable.
If the above isn't true then I would recommend installing your bootloader into MBR again. My Slackware uses Lilo and the command while as a root user is
lilo -b /dev/hda
There is no harm to install the bootloader any number of times, in a floppy (/dev/fd0), inside its partition (/dev/hda2) or in the MBR (/dev/hda).