LILO in MBR , is there a problem??

[CaptainNothing]

I've got a dual boot system with win98 and redhat 7.1. I used to have 7.0, but decided to upgrade, and had to do a complete repartitioning of my HD. 7.0 worked fine, but since i put 7.1 i've had BIG problems with my dual boot thing.
So here are the questions

1. With 7.0 i had to boot from a disk, since
lilo had the 1024 problem. With 7.1 the lilo version corrected that problem, and i got the lilo installed in the MBR. Now, in some posts I saw some hinting that this option is troublesome, and even stupid. I understand it raises problems with WIN 2K, but are there any with WIN98??

2. Now, booting into linux is troublesome at the time, especially because after a windows crash, it sometime screws up. Two things happen:
2.1 At worse the lilo hangs at LI. In this situation, a boot disk doesn't solve the problem(kernel panic cannot find root or kernel image or cannot mount root), and only a complete reinstall will work, because even an upgrade or rescue mode fail since they don't find the root partition. The other partitions are ok though, apparently a win98 crash messes up the root or something.
2.2 At best, there are problems during the kernel boot, sometimes failed rc scripts, others kernel panics and boot stops.
The fact that LILO is in the MBR might have something to do since i had no problems whatsoever when i had the 7.0 version.

3. Linux screwing up my windows data partitions- Several times has this happen. Last time i installed linux, booted fine but saw a lot of disk activity. Going into the console something appeared about bad FAT or something. A reboot into windows confirmed that data was corrupted and lost because of this. This only happened after the 7.1 install.

Now, i've got two theories. One is that because when i repartioned my hard drive, i didn't touch on my primary win partion, c:, but resized d: and e:, win98 somehow still thinks that it still is using the old partition scheme, and so uppon crashes and using scandisk to correct problems, it brings trouble to the Linux partitions.
Another theory is that i've got FAT32 and ext2 logical partitions on my extended partition, but i don't really think this is it.

Some more info that might help, i've got 4 primary partitions, c:, the root and the swap partition, plus the extended partition.
Since the windows crash affects the root partition, i suspect that the problem is in the primary partitions.

Note: on redhat 7.0 i used the automatic partitioning thing, and had only two partitions, swap and root, both primary. With 7.1 automatic partition only worked when i when i tryed to install red hat on an empty partitionless disk. Even with about 6GB of unused space(not attributed to a partition) it still said that there wasn't enough space for an automatic partition scheme.

I really need some help on this. I've had problems with mp3 files lossing quality and gaining little defects because of data corruption, plus some lost files and folders.
This weekend, after being connected a whole weekend to the network on win98, i lost all my extended partitions because of a corrupted whatever table. the c: partition worked fine, and i could use win98 fine, just had no access to the d: and e: partitions. This might be a virus or attack i know, but since i've had some problems with the disks and when the computer is up for a long time, i think is just screwed up. Yesterday i reinstalled win98, and today i'm putting redhat 7.1 again, all clean installations, repartitioned my hdd, reformatted, etc, to see how it will work.

[Alex Cavnar, aka alc6379]

I'm not sure about the other problems, but on windows still looking at your Linux partitions, try going into cfdisk (or fdisk) and actually checking whether or not those partitions are labelled as FAT32 partitions or as Linux. That should help... I had a similar problem a while ago...

[jetblackz]

1. None.

2. My guess is you rushed it. You have to scandisk & defrag THOROUGH before Linux install. Most would do it while they're awake. I do it while I'm sleeping. If you don't, chances are there are lost clusters or even bad sectors.

3. Linux doesn't screw Windows up unless you specifically give it permission to. To access FAT32. If you don't want it touch Windows, remove the line(s) in /etc/fstab & reboot.

What partition tool(s) do you use? Stick with one. FDISK could be the culprit. I'd use Disk Druid on Redhat during install.

Steer clear of auto-partitioning. It'll only screw things up. Unless Linus is the sole OS.

[Eclipse]

You just might want to try Loadlin.
Loadlin doesn't care what you do to your partitions, because NOTHING is ever written to any MBR or boot partition!
It boots Linux and Windows easily, quickly and safely.

I have written a step-by-step N.H.F.
The latest version is here:

LoadLin Step by Step Instructions (http://www.linux.sh)


You'll never see that dreaded Li without the Lo ever again!

[CaptainNothing]

jetblackz: On point 2, when i repartioned by hard drive, i left the c: partition untouched, and deleted the dos extended partition, and with it the hda5(d :) and hda6(e :) partitions. Later defined the new partitions. I trashed the partitions along with all the data(backup first), so Could this still bring trouble??

About the partition tool, i used dos fdisk to create the dos partitions, and linux fdisk to create the linux partitions, so you could have a point there, but this was the exact same method I used in my RH7.0 install, which worked fine.

About Linux screwing up FAT32 partitions, well, i found out very fast that if i don't wan't to mess them, all i have to do is eliminate the respective entries from fstab, problem is i want to have access to the partitions. As many people, most of my multimedia data is there.

Alex: You reminded me of a question i had, should the extended partition be linux extended or windows extended. I think i toyed arround with the linux extended, but had problems with the FAT logical partitions. At the moment it is Windows extended, and it has both FAT32 partitions and ext2 partitions, but i really don't know if this could be a problem.

Another question: What the hell is LBA???

End note: Sorry about the long posts

[Alex Cavnar, aka alc6379]

Originally posted by CaptainNothing:
<STRONG>

Alex: You reminded me of a question i had, should the extended partition be linux extended or windows extended. I think i toyed arround with the linux extended, but had problems with the FAT logical partitions. At the moment it is Windows extended, and it has both FAT32 partitions and ext2 partitions, but i really don't know if this could be a problem.

Another question: What the hell is LBA???

End note: Sorry about the long posts</STRONG>

1.) It doesn't matter. AFAIK, the DOS extended partitions and Linux extended are one in the same. I'd have to check on that, though...

2.) LBA: Logical Block Addressing. Most newer machines have it as a BIOS feature. In Linux terms, it allows you to boot past the 1024 cylinder. I think it does some other things as well, but I don't know any of them. Basically it allows Large HDD support.

3.) Long posts aren't bad unless you're saying something rude, dumb, or offensive. So far, ;) you're okay.