Re: Intalling Linux

[Steven Pritchard <steve@osiris.silug.org>]

Patrick Black said:
> I am a new Linux user.  I have tried to install it on a second IDE Hard
> Drive on my 486 system.  I have two problems.  First When the install
> programs runs everything works until I get to the make a boot disk section.
>  My system hangs and does not do anything.

What distribution are you trying to install?  Version?

> I then decided to skip that step and make the disk later.  i have finished
> the install and when I reboot LILO starts to load.  But I only get LI then
> the system hangs.  I have read a few things that suggest making a /boot
> partition on my HD but my drive is only 514 Meg so it shouldn't be a
> problem.  If anyone has any ideas on how to fix this I would appreciate it.

You should be able to boot from the second IDE disk just fine,
assuming it is on the primary IDE interface.  If it is on the
secondary interface, you'll definitely have a problem.

There are a few systems out there (especially older ones) with
slightly broken BIOSs that lilo just doesn't like...  Also, a lot of
486s don't quite do large disks quite right, and they confuse lilo.
You might want to dig around in your BIOS to see if you can turn LBA
either off or on.  If all else fails, boot the installation disk and
write down the drive geometry that the kernel reads from the disk,
then feed that to lilo.  (I don't quite remember the exact syntax for
that right now...)

I hope some of that helps...  You should probably also look through
some of the documentation on the Linux Documentation Project site,
which we have a mirror of at

    http://www.silug.org/LDP/

>  Linux looks like a great system.

It is.  :-)

Steve
-- 
steve@silug.org           | Linux Users of Central Illinois
(217)698-1694             | Meetings the 4th Tuesday of every month
Steven Pritchard          | http://www.luci.org/ for more info

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