Knoppix won't boot after HD install

[ixalarx]

All right, I have a new problem. I've installed knoppix to my HD, but I can't get it to boot. It shows the NT bootloader and XP boots, but I can't see any sign of knoppix. I used the knoppix 3.7 installer and selected for lilo to be installed in MBR. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

[ixalarx]

Right. I looked in cfdisk and noticed that my windows partition was marked as bootable, my linux partition wasn't. Sould I just mark my linux partition as bootable? That may seem like a stupid question, but I don't know what I'm doing and don't want to screw anything up. Again, thanks for any help you can provide.

[CrashedAgain]

Right. I looked in cfdisk and noticed that my windows partition was marked as bootable, my linux partition wasn't. Sould I just mark my linux partition as bootable? That may seem like a stupid question, but I don't know what I'm doing and don't want to screw anything up. Again, thanks for any help you can provide.

No, you don't want your linux partition set to bootable, lilo will boot it. It sounds like lilo did not install properly if the first screen you see is XP booting. Boot into your HD install from the CD with 'knoppix lang=us root=/dev/hda5 noinitrd ro' (replace hda5 with the correct partition for your install). Then check /etc/lilo.conf to see if it is correct. It should have 'boot=/dev/hda', an entry for knoppix and an entry for windows. Then open a console & 'sudo lilo' to try to install lilo from the HD install. Follow up on any error messages.

One of the bugs in the hdinstaller is that if something goes wrong with the lilo install it doesn't report back to the user, it just continues on without installing lilo. One potential source of trouble is that the installer adds any cheatcodes in effect to the 'append=' line in lilo.conf & lilo sometimes doesn't like things repeated...like for instance if you are using the cheatcode 'vga=normal' this will conflict with the 'vga=791' which is part of the default lilo.conf.

[ixalarx]

Okay, I checked the file and it looks fine, but when I ran lilo at the command line I got this output:

/dev/mapper/control: open failed: No such device
Is device-mapper driver missing from kernel?
/dev/mapper/control: open failed: No such device
Is device-mapper driver missing from kernel?
Incompatible libdevmapper 1.00.19-ioctl (2004-07-03)(compat) and kernel driver
Warning: Unable to determine video adapter in use in the present system.
Added Linux *
Added Linux(2.4)-1
Added Linux(2.6)-2
Warning: CHANGE AUTOMATIC assumed after "other=/dev/hda2"
Device 0x0300: Inconsistent partition table, 2nd entry
CHS address in PT: 619:0:1 --> LBA (9944235)
LBA address in PT: 9359280 --> CHS (582:150:1)
Fatal: Either FIX-TABLE or IGNORE-TABLE must be specified
If not sure, first try IGNORE-TABLE (-P ignore)

I have no clue what this means, but I hope it helps.

[franz29]

If not sure, first try IGNORE-TABLE (-P ignore)

lilo -P ignor

and reboot

[ixalarx]

I would have tried the lilo -P thing, but now when trying to boot from HD with the CD it doesn't start at all. It gets to
"Running from HD, regenerate ld.so.cache and modules.dep..." then stops. The light on the case shows no HD activity. Am i pretty much screwed here?

[franz29]

what do u get on boot is lilo now or still xp

sorry have to leave

[ixalarx]

No, I'm using the CD to boot from the HD.

[franz29]

using the CD to boot from the HD.
how
fromhd
or
whith chroot


and if you boot from your hd what's happend

see your tomorrow

[ixalarx]

Sorry, I was pretty rushed and couldn't post very coherently. I'll just recap what happened. After reading your post about using lilo -P, I tried to boot using Crashed's instructions "knoppix lang=us root=/dev/hda5 noinitrd ro", but the booting seemed to stop after showing "Running from HD, regenerate ld.so.cache and modules.dep..." It still does not show anything while booting without the CD but the NT bootloader.

[ixalarx]

All right. I decided to boot from CD and run fsck on my root partition. It fixed an INCREDIBLE nunber of disk errors, now partitionmagic says that the ext2 superblock contains illegal information (I'm running ext3). At this point I'd like to just uninstall lilo from my MBR, format my partitions, and just try installing knoppix again. Is there anny way to get rid of lilo without booting from the HD? Again, thanks for all the help.

[franz29]

fdisk /MBR (fdisk from mikysoft)

[franz29]

wait !!
you sait your nt loader is still working so lilo isn't on your MBR so do nothing

to see if lilo is on mbr do

boot from cd
in console sudo hexedit /dev/hda and look for LILO in the first line
FA EB 21 01 B6 01 4C 49 4C 4F 16 05 ..!...LILO..