unbootable hard disk

[B. Alan Mattison]

Sometimes the most obvious things will slap you in the face...are you sure
lilo.conf is set correctly?

----- Original Message -----
From: "Chuck Hallenbeck" <chuckh at mhonline.net>
To: "Speakup Distribution List" <speakup at speech.braille.uwo.ca>
Sent: Saturday, January 18, 2003 4:45 AM
Subject: unbootable hard disk


> 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
>
>
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