[TriLUG] grub and lilo problem

[William Villalba]

Hi Aaron,

The error I get is just "Grub"...and nothing happens, and changing the 
settings in the bios the best I got was "Grub" then something like 
"starting grub please wait..." but stays there and nothing 
happens...With  Lilo, it just prints the letter L and that's it, nothing 
else...
I thought about the 1024 issue and create a /boot partition, but the 
realized that as long as windows takes over the first partition it would 
not work. I changed it and as I say in my original message I tried 
installing Linux first, but now windows cannot get installed.  Here is 
my partitioning scheme I have tried:
1. The first attempt was: 

/dev/hda1   ntfs   40gb   primary
/dev/hda2   ext2   120mb  primary
/dev/hda3   ext3  38gb  primary
/dev/hda4  swap 1.2gb logical

2. My second one:

/dev/hda1 ext2  120mb for boot
/dev/hda2 ext3   40gb for  /
/dev/hda3  ntfs  for  windows
/dev/hda  swap 1.2 gb

The first scheme worked for windows, but neither lilo nor grub were able 
to boot. The second one, grub was able to work, but windows did not even 
got to the second stage...

Thanks Aaron...

Aaron S. Joyner wrote:

> William Villalba wrote:
>
>> Hi David,
>>
>> Thanks for your reply...That is the problem I am having, however, I 
>> do not think that the system is an "old one." This is precisely what 
>> I do not understand, since both motherboard and processor are, as far 
>> as I know, capable of reading large disks--the motherboard is an 
>> Intel D865GBF and the processor is also an Intel P-4.
>> A bit frustrating...but, thanks so much anyhow...
>
>
> One Wild Flaming Guess(tm), coming right up!
>
> How is this drive partitioned?  Is the kernel in the first cylinders?  
> Does LILO boot with LILILILILILILI?
> It's a common problem to create a single partition, which is 
> significantly large, such that the kernel ends up beyond the 1024th 
> cylinder on the disk.  The net result being that LILO is unable to 
> boot to the disk.  The generally practiced solution is to have a /boot 
> partition, which lives at the beginning of the disk, and contains the 
> kernel.  You can create a symlink from /vmlinuz -> /boot/vmlinuz for 
> convenience, as needed.
>
> Although, with GRUB, this problem should magically disappear, as it 
> understands the file systems and can chase the file where ever it 
> actually is, regardless of disk geometry.  Can you be more specific 
> about what errors you get, or what happens when Grub can not boot your 
> system?
>
> Aaron S. Joyner