[Wylug-help] Boot Question

[James Holden]

Morning Roger,

> I am having a problem rebooting - using SuSE 8.1
> Due, I suspect, to various updates over the years, I seem to have ended
> up with the following unusual partition table :-
>
>                     start    stop    description
> /dev/hda1       1        1048      win95 extended (LBA)
> /dev/hda5       1          3         linux  ext3   /boot
> /dev/hda6       4          1011    linux  ext3   /
> /dev/hda7      1012      1048    linux swap
>
> this is all on an 8GB disc, as reported by siga.

That doesn't look very good. hda1 is overlapping with all the other
partitions. The rest look okay, they're numbered as though they're logical
partitions but there isn't an extended partition.

It looks like the partition type for hda1 is wrong, should be extended
(0x05) not win95LBA (0x0b). That would leave no primary partition though
but I don't think LILO/Linux is bothered about that.

> /dev/hdc is still formatted for windows as originally supplied, although
> all the windows crap has been deleted and it is just a second 8GB disc
> full of my data and backup stuff (ok MP3's).

Maybe the partition table from /dev/hdc has got written to /dev/hda?
>
> On a re-boot, the normal sequence only gets to "LIL" and then halts. I

>From the LILO error codes at:

http://www.linux.org/docs/ldp/howto/Bootdisk-HOWTO/a1483.html

...that means:

"The second stage boot loader has been started, but it can't load the
descriptor table from the map file. This is typically caused by a media
failure or by a geometry mismatch."

Has the drive geometry been changed the the BIOS, perhaps it was on LBA
but now has been set to LARGE or CHS.

> have to start with the CD/DVD boot, start the install, select the
> language, then after the hardware probe I can select the option to boot
> the installed system, which works fine. This happened again last night

This would suggest that your disk hasn't failed, unless you've got a bad
sector in a fairly unlucky place. I don't know if it uses the kernel on
the CD or on the hard disk when you choose to boot the installed system.

> due to a power cut and my UPS not being up to the job for more than
> about 20 minutes. Although the problem has been with me for a long time

Heh, I was given a UPS, which I proudly plugged in, and then discovered
that the battery was duff and only ran the machine for about 10 seconds!

> now, it is not really too hard to live with because the machine stays on
> all the time. I would like to sort it though.
>
> Is this a hardware problem ?
> Any ideas how to further diagnose/test/investigate/sort ?
>
> I am a still a Linux novice so nothing too clever please!!

I suspect it's the BIOS translation that's wrong. Should be an easy fix.


HTH James


--
James Holden, Leeds, United Kingdom
james-at-jamesholden-dot-co-dot-uk
http://www.microcosmos.co.uk