no MBR (not altered)

[derjens]

hi all,

i just installed knoppix3.1 on my hdd (created hda1/swap 300MB, hda2/ext2 3900MB with cfdisk). installation went fine. but when i try to reboot i can not boot from hdd (insert system disk). booting from fd works. but i can not install lilo. a lilo -v -t gives me a message like: mbr and map not altered. no ohter os on my hdd.
many thnx for input.

cheers from berlin,
jens

[robelanator]

a lilo -v -t gives me a message like: mbr and map not altered. no ohter os on my hdd.
many thnx for input.

This is just a shot in the dark, but some motherboards have a bios options for diabling MBR changes for virus protection reasons. Look around there to see if this option is enabled and if it is disable it.

[Niklaus]

I had a similar problem. What I did was
boot from the cd
edit the /etc/lilo.conf (ramdisk copy) to identify
hda as the boot drive
run lilo with the options to specify the locations of the map files
eject the cd and reboot

[derjens]

i check the BIOS, no virus options.

will try the cd boot way. but since i'm quite a newbe what
specific options do i have to run lilo with, specially regarding
map file option?


thnx for help
jens

[RockMumbles]

Are you dual-booting, I would assume not since you are talking about your first hard drive (hda)
if you are not dual-booting, then:
Boot with your cd, and use " knoppix 2 " to start so you just have root console(s) running, then:
first I would run cfdisk and check your partitions:
*cfdisk /dev/hda
in the partition table make sure that in the Flags column that there is a Boot entry listed for your /dev/hda2 partition (which should be FS-Type ext2) if your ext2 partition is not bootable select that partition and then make it [Bootable] save the changes and then re-run lilo using the example below. If your partition table looks OK, ie. your ext2 partition is bootable, then look at your lilo setup, mount your / partition on your hard drive (from what you've posted):
*mount /dev/hda2 /mnt/hd
then:
*cd /mnt/hd
to change directory to your hard drive, and then:
*chroot /mnt/hda2
to change your 'root filesystem to your hard drive' and now check your lilo.conf file with:
*less /etc/lilo.conf
make sure that the following lines are in the file:
boot=/dev/hda
root=/dev/hda2
If you are NOT dual-booting you will need to have: boot=/dev/hda this line writes your boot record to your master boot record, it should be near the top, and the root=/dev/hda2 line should be after the image=.... line, it tells lilo where your root file system is located.
if both lines look OK. then I would rerun lilo with:
*/sbin/lilo -v
If either line is goofed up, ie. boot=/dev/hda2 instead of boot=/dev/hda etc. you'll need to edit your lilo.conf file, so use a console editor, nano is pretty easy to use run it like this:
*nano /etc/lilo.conf
which will start nano and load your lilo.conf file, then make the necessary changes, press CTRL-x then y then ENTER now re-run lilo with the /sbin/lilo -v command.

If you still get errors post them.

HTH

rock