[Wylug-help] Boot Question

[John Hodrien]

On Thu, 6 Feb 2003, James Holden wrote:

> > 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's an extended partition hence the label "win95 extended (LBA)".  I wouldn't
worry about the label being wrong too much.  Labels are for wusses anyway
<heehee> since linux doesn't generally get in too much of a tizz when they're
wrong.

> 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.

Nope, it doesn't care.

> > /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?

Then how would you be able to boot from CD as he described?  I think the
partition table is fine, it's the MBR that's shagged (perhaps).

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

You could be right with that one.

jh

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