Re: new Etch install fails to boot

On Tue, 31 Jul 2007 21:31:09 -0400, I wrote:
>> Still, I verified that /etc/lilo.conf was there, and there were no grub
>> files anywhere under /target (including under /boot). I finished the
>> installation anyway, and found it totally bizarre when a reboot produced
>> the same output as before, including "GRUB Loading stage1.5". It's as if
>> this string lives on the MBR and I'm unable to overwrite it.

On Wed, 01 Aug 2007 02:18:13 -0500, Mumia W.. replied:

> Which MBR? Each fixed disk can have its own MBR. It sounds like you have
> six ATA devices installed; the BIOS is trying to boot from one of those
> devices, and you need to write to the MBR for that device.
>
> BTW, did you change /etc/lilo.conf to work with your system?
>
> Where are and what are the devices before /dev/hde?

The motherboard (Abit BX133 440BX) has four IDE connectors allowing 8 drives in total. hda-hdd have a speed of 33 MB/s max. hde-hdh have a speed of 66 MB/s max. So I have always had the two hard drives connected to hde and hdf. There are no other hard drives. I forget which device the CD drive is, but most of the IDE connectors are not connected to anything. Since I brought this up 6 years ago, the MBR has been on hde and supported both Win98 and Red Hat. This all worked until I tried to build Etch on hde (with no Windows).

It is a good idea that maybe grub is trying to read the MBR on the wrong disk (hdf). I may have to break down and disconnect hdf before I resume. I may also try to read the MBR with "od" if it's available just to see where this string "GRUB Loading stage1.5: is coming from.

I did not try to edit the lilo.conf that was installed. It was really a bare-bones file.

Thanks.

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