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View Full Version : How to make partition bootable?



HotDog
02-04-2004, 04:19 AM
I'm a newbie to Linux, ~seven weeks. When I installed
Knoppix to the hard drive, apparently I made a wrong
choice at the end, and as a result it's not bootable from
the HDD. It boots fine from a floppy but is there any way
I can add the lilo (or whatever) or change the boot sector
or something to make this partition bootable? Or, if I
reinstall Knoppix to the hard drive will I lose all my
settings and configs?

Thanks.

fingers99
02-04-2004, 04:44 AM
What drive is Knoppix on? Are there any other Operating Systems on the drive/system?

HotDog
02-04-2004, 07:21 PM
I reinstalled Knoppix, which did lose everything
in the partition. But it still didn't boot. This
time I made notes of the errors at the end of the
install. Then I modified the lilo.conf file, ran
lilo from Knoppix on the HDD after a floppy boot,
and made the partition bootable.

/sbin/lilo -B /boot/sid.bmp -v -C /home/knoppix/tmp/testlilo.conf
Writing boot sector.
Backup copy of boot sector in /boot/boot.0343

I got eight warnings from this but it worked. (I
did use the -t test option first.) It took me about
an hour to set up my personal stuff again, printer,
dialer, etc.

I have two physical hard drives, the first with
Windows 98, the second with Windows XP, Knoppix,
Mandrake, and a linux swap file in partitions. I
use BootItNG to make selections at boot up. Now
everything works fine.

I really like Knoppix. I tried 14 distributions
before deciding on the one I'm going to use to
learn Linux. After I went out and bought an external
modem, I got the internal winmodem to work using
Knoppix, but I still haven't got sound. I have a
Rockwell Chameleon (Conexant Riptide) combo card
with modem and sound on the motherboard.