Advice please?(Re: [Sussex] Getting brave ?, perhaps not.)

[John Crowhurst]

> I have tried this again, but I can't mount /dev/hda4 - I've looked at
> both the  fstab and the mtab, but haven't got a clue as to what I should
> put in to  modify them (would I need to modify one or both ?)

mtab is the mount table for what is currently mounted, it is what mount
uses to know what is currently mounted. Use fstab to load partitions on
startup.

To load all the partitions in fstab use:

~# mount -a

>> I did look into using partition magic under windows to re-partition,
>> so instead of having xp, mandrake, swap, gentoo, it would be set as
>> xp, mandrake, swap, gentoo boot, gentoo root - but I can't get my head
>> round how I would accomplish this - and don't seem to be able to find
>> anywhere that would/could explain the differences between primary,
>> logical and extended partitions.
>
> This was a total failure. It didn't mater what I tried with partition
> magic,  It wouldn't let me do any changes - It kept telling me stuf
> about only having  4 primary partitions. so after managing to make
> /dev/hda4 and extended  partition, it wouldn't let me do anything with
> it, so I've had to return it  to the original config of having
> WindowsXP/Mandrake/swap/gentoo (which seems  to be there, because I can
> see it with the PM8 file browser)

Under DOS partitioning system you can only have 4 primary partitions. To
get around this problem, Microsoft created a sub-partition system called
extended partitions, where you lose a partition to become sub partitions.
Logical partitions under Microsoft are there so that they can be labelled
with an easy label as in C, D etc.

You would need to create:

hda1 = Windows
hda2 = Mandrake
hda3 = Swap
hda4 = Extended
+hda5 = Gentoo boot
+hda6 = Gentoo root

Or you could have:

hda1 = Windows
hda2 = Swap
hda3 = Extended
+ hda5 = Mandrake Boot
+ hda6 = Mandrake Root
+ hda7 = Gentoo Boot
+ hda8 = Gentoo Root

>> Can I then just modify the lilo.conf under mandrake to make the gentoo
>> boot from hard drive ?
>>
>> Or
>>
>> How would I make a gentoo boot floppy that doesn't halt my system
>> saying that it's "invalid compressed format" ?
>
> I tried modifying the /etc/lilo.conf like this
>
> boot=/dev/hda
> map=/boot/map
> vga=normal
> default="windowsXP"
> keytable=/boot/uk.klt
> prompt
> nowarn
> timeout=100
> message=/boot/message
> menu-scheme=wb:bw:wb:bw
> image=/boot/vmlinuz
> 	label="Mandrake"
> 	root=/dev/hda2
> 	initrd=/boot/initrd.img
> 	append="quiet devfs=mount hdc=ide-scsi acpi=off"
> 	vga=788
> 	read-only
> #image=/boot/kernel-2.4.20-gentoo-r6
> #	label="Gentoo"
> #	root=/dev/hda4
> #	initrd=/boot/initrd-2.4.20-gentoo-r6
> #	append="devfs=mount hdc=ide-scsi"
> #	read-only
> image=/boot/vmlinuz
> 	label="linux-nonfb"
> 	root=/dev/hda2
> 	initrd=/boot/initrd.img
> 	append="devfs=mount hdc=ide-scsi acpi=off"
> 	read-only
> image=/boot/vmlinuz
> 	label="failsafe"
> 	root=/dev/hda2
> 	initrd=/boot/initrd.img
> 	append="failsafe devfs=nomount hdc=ide-scsi acpi=off"
> 	read-only
> other=/dev/hda1
> 	label="windowsXP"
> 	table=/dev/hda
> other=/dev/fd0
> 	label="floppy"
> 	unsafe
>
> but as you can see, I had to cancel out the mod for the gentoo with #'s
> (is  this what's known as commenting out??) because lilo didn't like it
> when I  tried to incorporate the change with "lilo -v".

What was the error message when you tried it?

> Also, even though I made a fresh boot floppy for gentoo with
> "#dd if=/boot/kernel-2.4.20-gentoo-r6 of=/dev/fd0" (the kernel being
> what the  install routine told me was the "genkernel"), I'm still
> getting the invalid  compressed format (ERR1) error when trying to boot
> from the floppy, also, I  don't seem to be able to check what's actually
> on the floppy through  konqueror in mandrake?

Sounds like the kernel image was too big for the floppy. Have a look at
the size of this kernel image with ls -l /boot/kernel-2.4.20-gentoo-r6

You can mount the floppy to a loopback device and see what is on it that
way or mount it to a directory, with:

~# mount /dev/fd0 /mnt/floppy

--
John