(Answer) (Category) NetMAXFAQ : (Category) Configuration :
Why is LILO incorrectly detecting IDE drives in the BIOS table?
Applies to: 
                  NetMAX Linux RH52P v2.0

address-suppressed
This data is regarding LILO and using it as your boot manager. If you already have LILO installed on a non-NetMAX disk, or in the Master Boot Record (MBR) of a non-NetMAX disk, then you may disregard this information and edit your /etc/lilo.conf to add an entry for the NetMAX disk and partition, and then re-install LILO.

Users who do not have LILO already installed AND have more than one hard drive on their system should read the following information.

The LILO installer (/sbin/lilo), as of version 21, does not correctly determine the number of IDE drives installed in your system's BIOS: it will use the number of IDE drives that the Linux system detects in order to determine the BIOS device number to boot off of. This BIOS device number gets written to a boot block on your hard drive.

So, if you are installing LILO (the NetMAX installer does), and you have more than one drive in your system, you may encounter difficulties if you are installing LILO onto drives other than the first IDE drive.
For example, if you have two drives, one IDE and one SCSI, and you want to install LILO and boot off of the SCSI drive, then you will have to have turned off or unplugged the IDE drive when the system was last booted, so the LILO installer will not count the IDE drive as a BIOS drive. Then, in order to boot off of the SCSI drive, you will have to disable the IDE drive (not the controller!) in the system's BIOS, and enable the SCSI controller's BIOS.
As another example, if you have two IDE hard drives, and you want to install LILO and boot off of the second IDE hard drive, then you will have to have turned off or unplugged the first IDE drive when the system was last booted, so the LILO installer will not count the first IDE drive as a BIOS drive. Then, in order to boot off the second IDE drive, you will have to disable the first IDE drive (not the controller!) in the system's BIOS.

There are alternatives to these methods, if you wish to read the LILO version 21 documentation, located at: 

  ftp://tsx-11.mit.edu/pub/linux/packages/lilo/lilo-21.tar.gz
    in the lilo/README file

address-suppressed
Previous: (Answer) Why can't my ISA card with a non standard address be detected?
Next: (Answer) My Adaptec 2940UW controller isn't working right. What's wrong?
This document is: http://www.netmax.org/cgi-bin/fom.cgi?file=208
[Search] [Appearance]
This is a Faq-O-Matic 2.721.
This FAQ administered by ...Cybernet Systems Corp.