First Time with Linux- can't get to run...

[Syn2001]

hey, first time messing with linux or dual boot...

ran through mandrake install without a hitch... but when the system rebooted, instead of booting into linux (as the message said it would), it booted into windows. The boot disk that was supposedly written is blank and won't run on boot... and there is no linux boot option when restarting computer SO, in other words, i have no idea how to actually get INTO linux!

HELP!
thanks.

[Strike]

You must not have installed LILO (or GRUB, I think Mandrake uses GRUB these days) at the appropriate point during the install. The quickest and easiest answer is to just install again and make SURE you install GRUB and make SURE the bootdisk creation actually does something to the disk.

[Syn2001]

Ok, i'm about to throw those linux disks out the door.

I've installed 4 times, following the prompts. I made a boot disk every times, each time the A drive does SOMETHING. The final instruction is to remove the boot media and press OK- linux will restart and boot into linux.

IT DOESN'T FREAKING HAPPEN. It boots right into the win98 boot menu. The floppy (which was formatted in dos) is now unreadable in dos or windows and is totally ignored when in the a: drive during boot.

What is going on and how can I boot into linux? I can't tell you how frustrating it is to repeatedly install to no avail.

thanks.

ps- something was written to the floppy when I chose to boot with lilo and a graphic interface.

[ 15 July 2001: Message edited by: Syn2001 ]

[evulish]

try leaving the floppy in when your reboot.

[Syn2001]

hmm, tried the floppy already- simply doesn't read it.

as far as setting an active partition: used root, not MBR. I have win98 installed on my C drive... I have a small (6gig) E drive that I installed linux on (have a 1gig fat 32 partition, but the rest is auto-allocated linux). Can I set an active partition on any other drive than C?

Do I need to rethink the partitioning scheme?

thanks.

[ 15 July 2001: Message edited by: Syn2001 ]

[quandary]

The floppy drive is showing no activity during the boot process? Do you have your BIOS set up to check the floppy drive first when booting up?

[Syn2001]

wow- lots of help- let's hope somebody figures out what i'm screwing up!


Yeah, there is a brief try at the floppy, but nothing that lasts any time. If i go to dos after booting windows and pull up a: i get a drive failure (can't read the disk).

[slapNUT]

First thing is you need to make a boot disk that works. If you boot off a Win98 rescue disk does it work? That will eliminate the floppy. Put in the Mandrake cdrom #1 lets assume its E: At windows command prompt type
cd e:\dosutils
rawrite
#rawrite asks you for an image so type
e:\images\boot.img
#rawrite asks you for a destination drive so type:
a:

That should make you a bootable floppy. Now boot off that floppy and at the lilo boot: prompt type:
linux /root=/dev/hdc1
<edit>
linux root=/dev/hdc1
</edit>
Now you might get kernel panic if thats not the right partition. You said you had a 1 gig fat32 partition on that drive but you didn't say which partition. Also when you say E drive I'm assuming you are talking about bios hd2 (secondary master) hdc in linux.
<edit>If you get kernel panic then try:
linux root=/dev/hdc2
</edit>

[ 15 July 2001: Message edited by: slapNUT ]

[slapNUT]

Another thing is have you gone into setup and tried to switch which hard drive you boot from. Some bios's will let you boot from that E drive. I'm suspecting you have lilo installed on the same partition you installed linux to and therefore lilo is not in the boot sequence.

[ThePyr0x]

i think u got it there
u said that linux was installed on a seperate hard drive, which is probly known to the BIOS as IDE-1, it is probobly not set to check IDE-1, only IDE-0 where Windows is installed
(hmm listen to me, giving out advice on a LINUX msg board)
so in other words change the boot sequence to check the second hard drive instead of the first

[Syn2001]

Ok, i'll try these out tonight. Thanks everybody for the assistance! Not that anybody really cares ;), but I'll let ya'll know what (if any) works.

syn.

ps- as far as making a boot disk with rawrite, there is no boot.img, only boot.cat. rawriting it gives me a blank disk. Maybe this is what is happening during the install...


Ugh, I hate it when the answer is obvious in hindsight... yeah, I never could make a boot disk (still can't, even from inside linux), but when i changed the boot order in BIOS I finally managed to start linux up. Runs great!

thanks for all the assistance, hopefully soon I'll be able to pay it forward.

[ 15 July 2001: Message edited by: Syn2001 ]

[slapNUT]

Glad to hear you got Linux to boot. Have fun!
To make a boot disk try this.
mkbootdisk --device /dev/fd0 `uname -r`

[Syn2001]

ahh, boot disk made. It turned out the "new, formatted" disk I had been trying to use was corrupted... not giving an error message, but I couldn't transfer ANYTHING to it.

thanks again to everybody who helped out!