On Sun, 31 Dec 2000, Aaron Prohaska wrote:
> My comments added below |
> \/
>
> "Mikkel L. Ellertson" wrote:
>
> > Brian,
> > Yes, he should be able to boot fine by removing the IDE
> > drive. But he is going to have a problem when ever he changes the number
> > of IDE drives. The problem is that his BIOS doesn't have the option to
> > boot from SCSI drive, so it will number the IDE drives first. LILO can
> > handle this, but you have to tell it how the BIOS is numbering the
> > drives. Unfortunitly, LILO can not do this for itself. This is covered
> > in the LILO docs.
> >
>
> This is what I have been doing to make the machine boot so I can
> figure out what to do. Every time I test the IDE drive I change the
> jumper on the cdrom to slave and then plug in the IDE hard drive and
> try to boot.
>
> >
> > I have worked with several IDE/SCSI combonation systems, but they
> > all supported booting from the SCSI drive in the BIOS. In this case, that
> > is not true. Also, from what is happening, I think the BIOS on the SCSI
> > card is overriding the MB BIOS and booting from the SCSI drive, but I am
> > not sure if this will continue, or if it is only because the IDE drive
> > isn't bootable yet. There are advantages to both cases.
> >
> > If the system will keep booting from the SCSI drive after the IDE
> > drive has Windows 2k installed, then Windows should install its loader to
> > the MBR of the IDE disk. That leaves LILO intact, and LILO should be able
> > to boot Windows with no problem. The down side is that adding another IDE
> > drive, or removing the IDE drive will give LILO problems when booting
> > Linux.
>
> I can say for sure that I won't be adding any more IDE drives to the
> system if that helps. The only reason I am trying to add this IDE
> drive is because I happen to have an extra drive lying around. If I
> add anymore drives they will be more SCSI drives.
>
> I do now have a boot disk that I made, but it does have Lilo written
> to it yet. I found some documentation for writing the kernel to the
> floppy using dd if=/boot/vmlinuz of=/dev/fd0 bs=8192. I tried booting
> from the floppy and it worked. Do I need to have Lilo on the floppy as
> well? I'll probably make a second floppy like this for safety sake. So
> now if I can just get the IDE drive in and linux working so that I can
> install Win2K on the IDE drive. If for some reason Win2K overwrites
> the MBR I can hopefully use the floppy to boot back into Linux.
>
You do not need LILO on the boot floppy. The one you have will work
fine. The thing having a LILO boot floppy does for you is let you pass
information to the kernel during boot. Things like telling it what the
root file system is, or to boot up in the single user mode. This can come
in handy.
> >
> > If the system boots from the IDE drive, then he could create a
> > small /boot partation at the start of the IDE drive. That way LILO will
> > always know where to load the kernel, and after the kernel is loaded, how
> > the BIOS numbers the drives doesn't matter. The only problem is that
> > Windoes will overwrite LILO installed on the MBR with its own loader. I
> > am not sure what other problems you will run into with the dues boot - I
> > don't run Windows 2k. But with this setup, adding another IDE drive will
> > not cause problems. Removing the IDE drive will.
> >
>
> When you say that removing the IDE drive will cause problems what
> problems will it cause. I won't be adding anymore IDE drives, but at
> some point when I get more SCSI drives I'll probably remove the IDE
> drive from the system.
>
The problem will be that LILO will try and load the kernel from the wrong
drive. When you remove the IDE drive, the first SCSI drive will be 0x80
instead of 0x81. You will have to boot from a floppy, edit
/etc/lilo.conf, and run LILO to update things.
>
> Thanks very much,
>
> Aaron
>
Aron,
Would you be willing to try something for me? Put in your IDE
drive, boot from your boot floppy, back up your /etc/lilo.conf file for
me, add the changes below, and run LILO. (The boot=/dev/sda man already
be there.)
boot=/dev/sda
disk=/dev/sda
bios=0x80
Remove the boot disk, and then reboot Linux and see if it will boot
ok. It should boot off the hard drive. If it works ok, then install
Windows, and see what happens. After install, the system may boot right
to windows, or you may get the LILO prompt and be able to boot to Linux.
If you get the LILO prompt, then you can add the lines below at the end of
your lilo.conf file, and re-run LILO. One of the two should let you run
windows.
other=/dev/hda
label=Windows
or
other=/dev/hda1
label=Windown
Let me know how it goes. This is a learning experence for me too, as I
have never set up an IDE/SCSI system where the BIOS didn't have the boot
from SCSI option.
Mikkel
--
Do not meddle in the affairs of dragons,
for you are crunchy and taste good with ketchup.
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