[Herts] Newbie with Boot Hassle - Can anyone help?

[Dominic Hargreaves]

On Tue, Jan 28, 2003 at 06:27:50PM -0000, Geoff Pitt wrote:

> Just to make life awkward for myself I'm trying to set it up on a newly
> acquired RAID array and use Win98 at the same time.  I've been in touch with
> SuSE support however they don't support RAID without extra payment.  My
> situation is as follows:

What sort of RAID setup is it - a completely hardware-based solution? If so,
SuSE have no business not supporting it as to the OS it's just another disk.
If it's software-based, more information on what sort of configuration is
being used is required.

> I've split my array into two equal partitions the first I've made active DOS FAT32
> and installed Win98 and then booted the SuSE installation disk which has
> identified the blank partition and installed OK.  I can access the OS
> booting from the installation CD and have tried to use YaST to save LILO in
> various locations (boot, root, floppy..) however, wherever I try to boot it
> to it gives the same error:
> 
> LI 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 ...........etc for several lines
> 
> Then hangs.
> 
> I've tried a third party boot manager (MasterBooter) to no avail - is there
> a better solution?  I've just re-installed Win98 to get the boot partition
> back and access email etc.

I would recommend grub as it has worked for me in obscure situations where
LILO has failed. It also has the advantage of not needing you to reinstall
it when you add a kernel, and provides a powerful command-line interface on
the boot loader (in common with those seen on Real Computers :)

Look for grub and its documentation in your distribution -- if it doesn't
exist there, its home page is http://www.gnu.org/software/grub/ and contains
comprehensive documentation. If you still run into trouble, post exact
details here.

As always, keep a windows and linux boot disk handy.

Cheers,

Dom.