unbootable hard disk

[Chuck Hallenbeck]

Hi  Igor,

Sure, once I boot with a floppy the entire system comes up fine
on the HD, the file system is mounted and all the various
partitions are there big as life. I have been able to move a lot
of data from an older machine to the new one by burning a CDRW
and then copying from the CD drive to the HD on the new machine.
Everything works reasonably once I boot up, I just cannot get the
HD to boot without the help of a floppy.


On Sat, 18 Jan 2003, Igor Gueths wrote:

> Assuming you have any data on the hd, can you mount any filesystems once
> successfully booted from floppies? Bc if not, you may want to check to
> make sure that the connection from the hd to the power supply is firmly in
> place, and that there are no loose wires. Does the drive in fact spin up
> when you power the machine up?
>
> May you code in the power of the source,
> may the kernel, libraries, and utilities be with you,
> throughout all distributions until the end of the epoch.
>
> On Sat, 18 Jan 2003, Chuck Hallenbeck wrote:
>
> > Hi gang,
> >
> > What else should I look for? I have a brand new machine with a 40
> > GB Fujitsu HD and I am installing a Slackware 8.1 distro with
> > speakup and an external doubletalk. The installation was made
> > from a set of diskettes and went without a hitch. The root
> > partition was large because I need a lot of space for /tmp and
> > perhaps /var in addition to the usual miscellaneous stuff. It is
> > about 4 GB and is the first partition. I marked it active with
> > fdisk just in case, but installed lilo to the MBR anyway. The
> > software and the general configuration is similar to my own
> > system. I made a couple of boot disks during the installation
> > process, and it is fortunate that I did, because the system will
> > not boot from the HD. It boots fine from the floppies I made, but
> > not from the HD.
> >
> > I checked the bios setup program (a royal pain in the ass) and
> > saw that the HD was detected as the primary master, and that it
> > was selected as the second priority boot device, right behind the
> > floppy. I checked and double checked the installation (in fact I
> > did it more than once) being certain to install the kernel from
> > the installation boot floppy, but nothing. No error messages, no
> > nothing. It acts as though the HD were simply not present,. and
> > yet the bios recognizes it, it is on the list of devices to boot
> > from, and it works fine when booting from a floppy.
> >
> > Well maybe not entirely fine. One more symptom.  When I boot up
> > from a floppy and pay attention to how it is working, the HD is
> > extremely sluggish. Checking the data transfer rate with hdparm
> > -t, I get about 10% the rate I get on my own system. Also, the
> > hdparm command is unable to set the DMA option with the -d1
> > option. What happens is that the hdparm command causes a 60
> > second delay after which the system resumes functioning but
> > without the DMA setting changed.
> >
> > I am dealing with some idiots at a computer store who are
> > convinced the problem is with Linux, and I am equally stubborn in
> > insisting that it is not.
> >
> > Any notion of what I might be overlooking? This is incredibly
> > frustrating. I gave the folks at the store permission to wipe out
> > my root partition if they needed to, hoping they would put a DOS
> > or Windows OS on it to check it out, but they happen to have a
> > Redhat 6.0 disk lying around and are spinning their wheels trying
> > to replace Slackware 8.1 with Redhat 6.0 because they suspect
> > there is a hangup when Linux tries to use a raid personality.
> >
> > Thanks for any ideas.
> >
> > Chuck
> >
> >
> > --
> > The Moon is Full
> > So visit me sometime at http://www.mhonline.net/~chuckh
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Speakup mailing list
> > Speakup at braille.uwo.ca
> > http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup
> >
>
>
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> Speakup at braille.uwo.ca
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>

-- 
The Moon is Full
So visit me sometime at http://www.mhonline.net/~chuckh