OS's aren't working, need some long term help this time Options

[longgone]

Wellll ..... as I said in Erics thread I way beyond .... hurt my normal box so put the main hd in my standby box .... and the results are ... Slackware lost "X" ,, Debian works just fine so far (in other words I have not found any hurts yet) ,, MD2007.1 does partial POST .. gets to the "starting HAL" entry opens up the tray on the DVD player/CDRW unit (?????) .. and hangs there ,,, PCLOS2007 boots all the way up to the Desktop but fails to make a web connection .... and Frugalware suffered collateral damage (I will have to reinstall it) .............. and that my friends is the status now .... it will be a long week ....

[Bruno]

Well simply swapping a HD from one box to another in most cases does not work . . . only Debian does most of the hardware detection again at each boot ( that is why it takes longer to boot ) all other distros set up the hardware only once as you install the distro and pick up only new plugged in hardware after.

So all you can do is re-install the distros that do not work ( or if the install CD has a "repair" function you can try that ) . . . . sorry


Bruno

[longgone]

.................

Wellllll ..... this might work out quite well after all ..... I could not get Slack 12 to install on the other box but it did install on this one .... so I shall try to replace Slack 11 with 12 ,, not a problem to redo MD2007.1 ,, but since PCLOS2007 does boot all the way up, just does not web connect all I should have to do is reconfigure the network part .. just need the cmds to get it done ... have not yet check the /etc/resolv.conf on it yet but I'm pretty sure there is another cmd involved here too .... but the main problem at the moment is that my LILO boot mngr is in Slack 11 ... so I need to change that out before I really can do much of anything ....

[Bruno]

Well, before you decide what distro's bootloader you will put in the MBR, first make sure that of all the distros you can boot now their bootloaders are in the / partition of that distro. Because that will make it easier to add entries for those distros to the bootlader you will put in the MBR. ( yes you will have to re-construct the multiboot, since it is the Slack 11 that could not boot and you replaced, so the info is gone )


Bruno

[longgone]

So far .. this is what I have ....

HDA1 has MD2007.1 on it and the bootloader is loaded to HDA1 MBR ..... HDA5 has swap on it but I am very suspect of it .... HDA6 has Slackware 12 on it with no LILO/bootloader installed ,, I skipped it since the two previous installs I tried both ended up with boot problems .. HDA7 did have PCLOS2007 but now it is blank seems like it does not want to install on this box ... HDA9 has the Debian install on it and I did nothing to it .. I am fairly certain that the bootloader for Debian was installed on the / partition .... as of yet there is nothing on HDB ...

[Bruno]

HDA6 has Slackware 12 on it with no LILO/bootloader installed ,, I skipped it since the two previous installs I tried both ended up with boot problems ..

?? . . . I thought to read yesterday that the Slackware 11.0 bootloader was in the MBR right now . . . Am I wrong ? Who's bootloader is in the MBR at this moment ?


Bruno

[longgone]

Bruno ................

At the moment ... the only bootloader in the MBR (that I am aware of) is MD2007.1 ,,, I installed Slackware but skipped the step to install LILO ,, so at he moment Slack is there but just can't get to it and I had serious problems trying to get X to work in Slackware too

[Bruno]

Okay . . . so when you let the 2007.1 installer place the bootloader in the MBR did you change it to Lilo or did you go for the default ?


Bruno

[longgone]

Bruno..... I went with the default ... might as well learn the Grub sooner or later ... it sort of looks like it is getting to be the more dominant one out there .... or until I can find AND install one where it doesn't matter which one I use as it will boot from the multi purpose/multi use boot loader .....

[Bruno]

Okay in that case boot Mandriva 2007.1 and open the file /boot/grub/menu.lst in an editor:

( As User )

CODE

$ kdesu kwrite  /boot/grub/menu.lst

And add these 3 lines at the bottom of the file:

title Debian
root (hd0,8)
chainloader +1

Next reboot and try to boot Debian from the menu.


We will see after Slackware in a minute.



Bruno

[longgone]

..............

Didn't work but I am going to make a guess here about the cmd "hd0,8" just guessing but does that break down to HDA partition 8 .... if so there is nothing on it ... Debian is on partition 9 .... but then I am just guessing on this ......

[Bruno]

(hd0,8) is "grub-speak" for /dev/hda9 . . . . . .


Bruno

[longgone]

Oh ... okay ... this almost sounds like a bit of the BSD language .... anyhow it would not boot up to Debian ........ it did put it on the menu though ... just won't boot it up .....

[Bruno]

Didn't you say above that you already were able to boot Debian ? . . How do you ?



Bruno

[longgone]

I was able to boot Debian ... before I went and installed Slackware 12 .. before I was using Slackware 11's LILO as the master boot loader/manager ,,, I probably would still have been using it if Slackware had not given me a headache with X ... I did all the tips .... root>password>init 3>~cd and tried to do XFree86 -configure and that was the end of it ... a flash of color which would be the beginning of the KDE setup steps then it goes black and stays black ...

[Bruno]

Ahaaaaa . . now I understand . . . . right . . . . hmmm . . . . yes, so how sure are you Debian is indeed on hda9 . . . and that the Debian bootloader is installed in hda9 too ??


Bruno

[longgone]

................

Well .... just going by guess work here ....... HDA9 was/is Debian before ,,,, and I did not make any partition changes other than to reformat ... HDA1 (MD2007.1) and HDA6 (Slackware 12) and HDA7 (PCLOS2007) .... I left HDA9 (Debian) alone since it was the primary distro .... and the only distro that was being used as the LILO bootloader was Slackware 11 ... so fwiw that is all the info I can come up with now ...

[Bruno]

Okay Dale . . let's have a look:

CODE

# mkdir /mnt/hda9
# mount /dev/hda9  /mnt/hda9
# cat  /mnt/hda9/boot/grub/menu.lst

Bruno

[longgone]

[dale@darkstar ~]$ su
Password:
[root@darkstar dale]# mkdir /mnt/hda9
[root@darkstar dale]# mount /dev/hda9 /mnt/hda9
[root@darkstar dale]# cat /mnt/hda9/boot/grub/menu.lst
cat: /mnt/hda9/boot/grub/menu.lst: No such file or directory
[root@darkstar dale]#

I do not even want to think about what this really means ........

[Bruno]

That means that most likely Debian is not on hda9 . . .


Bruno

[longgone]

.................

Ouch ............ well in order ...... HDA1 was MD2007.1 (still is too), HDA5 is swap (from which OS I have absolutely no idea), HDA6 has Slackware 12 installed and that is as far as that goes ,, HDA7 did have PCLOS2007 on it but now it is empty ,, HDA8 was empty adn HDA9 was Debian ,, the only thing that I can come up with is maybe Debian is now on HDA8 although to the best of my knowledge the only way that could have happened would be if I deleted a partition ....

[Bruno]

Well we can try the same trick for hda8:

CODE

# mkdir /mnt/hda8
# mount /dev/hda8  /mnt/hda8
# cat  /mnt/hda8/boot/grub/menu.lst

and hda10:

CODE

# mkdir /mnt/hda10
# mount /dev/hda10  /mnt/hda10
# cat  /mnt/hda10/boot/grub/menu.lst

Bruno

[longgone]

............

[root@darkstar dale]# mkdir /mnt/hda8
[root@darkstar dale]# mount /dev/hda8 /mnt/hda8
[root@darkstar dale]# cat /mnt/hda8/boot/grub/menu.lst
cat: /mnt/hda8/boot/grub/menu.lst: No such file or directory
[root@darkstar dale]# mkdir /mnt/hda10
[root@darkstar dale]# mount /dev/hda10 /mnt/hda10
mount: special device /dev/hda10 does not exist
[root@darkstar dale]# cat /mnt/hda10/boot/grub/ment.lst
cat: /mnt/hda10/boot/grub/ment.lst: No such file or directory

I know what I will be doing this weekend .... well since I am pretty sure that Slackware12 is on HDA6 ... we might should give it a go ... see if we can get it up and functioning .....

[Bruno]

One last try Dale:

CODE

# ls -al  /mnt/hda9/boot

Bruno

[longgone]

[root@darkstar dale]# ls -al /mnt/hda9/boot
total 10904
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Aug 16 05:37 ./
drwxr-xr-x 22 root root 4096 Apr 21 08:03 ../
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 70797 May 9 15:14 config-2.6.18-4-k7
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 4525821 Aug 16 05:37 initrd.img-2.6.18-4-k7
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 4526020 May 16 23:05 initrd.img-2.6.18-4-k7.bak
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 722453 May 9 21:18 System.map-2.6.18-4-k7
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 1268602 May 9 21:18 vmlinuz-2.6.18-4-k7

I am inclined to think something is there ..........................