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LILO mini-HOWTOMiroslav "Misko" Skoric, v3.18, 2004-01-11
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... | ID | LUN | Vendor | Product | Rev | Size | Sync | Bus | HD# |
| ... | 0 | 0 | QUANTUM | ATLAS10K2 | DDD6 | 17GB | 160 | 16 | 80h |
| ... | 1 | 0 | QUANTUM | ATLAS10K2 | DDD6 | 17GB | 160 | 16 | 81h |
| ... | 2 | 0 | IBM | DDRS | DC1B | 4GB | 80 | 16 | 82h |
| ... | 3 | 0 | IBM | DNES | SAH0 | 9GB | 80 | 16 | 83h |
If you don't own an adaptec card, you have to know what is the 'booting' disk (usually ID 0, but not necessary, it can be defined in the scsi card BIOS) where LILO is going to be found and start : this is the first disk so it has number 0x80. Then it's very simple, the BIOS follows the IDs.
By example :
ID 0 -> boot -> 0x80 ID 1 -> empty ID 2 -> disk -> 0x81 ID 3 -> disk -> 0x82
or
ID 0 -> disk -> 0x81 ID 1 -> empty ID 2 -> disk -> 0x82 ID 3 -> boot -> 0x80 ID 4 -> disk -> 0x83
This part doesn't care at all of what is installed on the scsi drives. But you should note that if you use an ID higher than the SCSI adapter it c an be a problem. So you should always try to set the SCSI adapter ID after the SCSI devices IDs.
OK, but NT must be the first disk to boot, so i want it in 0x80, but i already have LILO and a full ext2 only drive on 0x80 and my NT drive is in 0x83. How can i 'swap' linux and NT ? This a very easy : you just have to tell BIOS that NT drive is now 0x80 and the Linux drive is 0x83.
other=/dev/sdd1
label=nt
map-drive = 0x83
to = 0x80
map-drive = 0x80
to = 0x83
This change will produce a warning :
Warning: BIOS drive 0x8? may not be accessible
but if you know what you are doing it will run without problem.
I used it on this configuration which has a Red Hat Linux 7.1 and a Windows 2000 Pro :
Name Flags Part Type FS Type [Label] Size (MB) Disk Drive: /dev/sda - 0x80 sda1 Boot Primary Linux ext2 [/boot] 24.68 sda2 Primary Linux Swap 139.83 sda3 Primary Linux ext2 [/usr] 3150.29 sda4 Primary Linux ext2 [/home] 15044.04 Disk Drive: /dev/sdb - 0x81 sdb1 Primary Linux Swap 139.83 sdb2 Primary Linux ext2 [/] 3150.29 sdb3 Primary Linux ext2 [/opt] 1052.84 sdb4 Primary Linux ext2 [/public] 14015.88 Disk Drive: /dev/sdc - 0x82 sdc1 Primary Linux ext2 [/var] 1052.84 sdc2 Primary Linux ext2 [/tmp] 106.93 sdc3 Primary Linux ext2 [/cache] 1052.84 sdc4 Primary Linux ext2 [/chroot] 2352.44 Disk Drive: /dev/sdd - 0x83 sdd1 Boot Primary NTFS [WINDOWS_2000] 9162.97
My full /etc/lilo.conf :
boot=/dev/sda map=/boot/map install=/boot/boot.b prompt default=Linux read-only compact image=/boot/vmlinuz label=Linux root=/dev/sdb2 other=/dev/sdd1 label=Windows map-drive = 0x83 to = 0x80 map-drive = 0x80 to = 0x83
I just plugged a new scsi drive, and now LILO refuse to boot, what's going on ?
When you plug a disk, you must be careful with the IDs. If you add a drive between two already plugged disks the BIOS numbers are changed :
Before ----> After
scsi id - - BIOS id scsi id - - BIOS id
ID 0 - disk - 0x80 ID 0 - disk - 0x80
ID 1 - empty ID 1 - new disk - 0x81
ID 2 - disk - 0x81 ID 2 - disk - 0x82 !!
If you change the BIOS ids, you have to re-evaluate them.
Notice: 1GB is "Huge"? Well, once upon a time...
The system in my office has a 1GB IDE drive. The BIOS can only see
the first 504 MB of the IDE. (Where MB means 2**10 bytes, not 10**6
bytes.) So I have MS-DOS on a 350 MB partition /dev/hda1 and
my Linux root on a 120 MB partition /dev/hda2.
Hauke Laging (hauke@laging.de) and Bob Hall (bhall@hallfire.org) have noticed a small mistake above, so they've suggested a MB to be 2**20 bytes rather than 2**10 bytes. Thanks for correction. In addition, Hauke would like to learn more about what he called, "character codes on LILO startup, when LILO dies with LI, LI-, LIL- or whatever". I'd appreciate a contribution related to this issue or a valid web link to that.
Here it is (a contribution by Zohar Stolar, zohar@numericable.fr):
B. LILO boot error codes
http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/Bootdisk-HOWTO/a1483.html
Thanks for link.
MS-DOS was unable to install itself correctly when the drive was fresh. Novell DOS 7 had the same problem. Luckily for me, "Options by IBM" forgot to put the "OnTrack" diskette in the box with the drive. The drive was supposed to come with a product called "OnTrack Disk Manager." If you only have MSDOS, I guess you have to use it.
So I made a partition table with Linux' fdisk. MSDOS-6.2 refused to
install itself in /dev/hda1. It said something like ``this
release of MS-DOS is for new installations. Your computer already has
MS-DOS so you need to get an upgrade release from your dealer.''
Actually, the disk was brand new.
What a crock! So I ran Linux' fdisk again and deleted partition 1 from the table. This satisfied MS-DOS 6.2 which proceeded to create the exact same partition 1 I had just deleted and installed itself. MS-DOS 6.2 wrote its Master Boot Record on the drive, but it couldn't boot.
Luckily I had a Slackware kernel on floppy (made by the Slackware
installation program "setup"), so I booted Linux and wrote Lilo over
MS-DOS' broken MBR. This works. Here is the /etc/lilo.conf
file I used:
boot = /dev/hda map = /lilo-map delay = 100 ramdisk = 0 # Turns off ramdisk in Slackware kernel timeout = 100 prompt disk = /dev/hda # BIOS only sees first 500 MB. bios = 0x80 # specifies the first IDE. sectors = 63 # get the numbers from your drive's docs. heads = 16 cylinders = 2100 image = /vmlinuz append = "hd=2100,16,63" root = /dev/hda2 label = linux read-only vga = extended other = /dev/hda1 label = msdos table = /dev/hda loader = /boot/chain.b
After I installed these systems, I verified that the partition
containing the zImage, boot.b, map, chain.b, and message files can use
an msdos file system, as long as it is not "stackered" or
"doublespaced." So I could have made the DOS partition on
/dev/hda1 500 MB.
I have also learned that "OnTrack" would have written a partition table starting a few dozen bytes into the drive, instead of at the beginning, and it is possible to hack the Linux IDE driver to work around this problem. But installing would have been impossible with the precompiled Slackware kernel. Eventually, IBM sent me an "OnTrack" diskette. I called OnTrack's technical support. They told me Linux is broken because Linux doesn't use BIOS. I gave their diskette away.
Next, I installed Windows-95 on my office system. It blew away my nice Lilo MBR, but it left my Linux partitions alone. Kernels take a long time to load from floppy, so I made a floppy with a working Lilo setup on it, which could boot my kernel from the IDE.
I made the lilo floppy like so:
fdformat /dev/fd0H1440 # lay tracks on virgin diskette mkfs -t minix /dev/fd0 1440 # make file system of type minix mount /dev/fd0 /mnt # mount in the standard tmp mount point cp -p /boot/chain.b /mnt # copy the chain loader over lilo -C /etc/lilo.flop # install Lilo and the map on the diskette. umount /mnt
Notice that the diskette must be mounted when you run the installer so that Lilo can write its map file properly.
This file is /etc/lilo.flop. It's almost the same as the last one:
# Makes a floppy that can boot kernels from HD. boot = /dev/fd0 map = /mnt/lilo-map delay = 100 ramdisk = 0 timeout = 100 prompt disk = /dev/hda # 1 GB IDE, BIOS only sees first 500 MB. bios=0x80 sectors = 63 heads = 16 cylinders = 2100 image = /vmlinuz append = "hd=2100,16,63" root = /dev/hda2 label = linux read-only vga = extended other = /dev/hda1 label = msdos table = /dev/hda loader = /mnt/chain.b
Finally, I needed MS-DOS 6.2 on my office system, but I didn't
want to touch the first drive. I added a SCSI controller and
drive, made an msdos file system on it with Linux' mkdosfs, and
Windows-95 sees it as "D:". But of course MSDOS will not boot
off of D:. This is not a problem when you have Lilo. I added
the following to the lilo.conf in Example 2.
other = /dev/sda1 label = d6.2 table = /dev/sda loader = /boot/any_d.b
With this modification MSDOS-6.2 runs, and it thinks it is on C: and Windows-95 is on D:.
2003-11-19
Notice: Folks, that part is NOT a commercial for HP production of any means! In fact, a series of HP computers I have been using has delivered failures in power supply units, problems with hard disks etc. On the other side, laptop's batteries get exhausted earlier than expected. Other than these issues, HP machines are fine.
HP Omnibook 6000
A laptop computer Omnibook 6000 is equipped with a 'bootable' DVD drive and recently, at an ICT conference, I bought a bootable DVD-ROM with Mandrake Linux 9.1 installation. After booting the laptop with that bootable DVD, it gets directly to the Linux installation menu.
HP Vectra VL420 (used as a server)
In opposite, an HP Vectra VL420 doesn't have a DVD drive (it only has a CD drive), so the direct installation from that particular installation DVD is not possible. But, an option of making a bootable floppy disk for starting the installation procedure is possible. In fact, several boot images are available for those users who don't have (bootable or not) DVD drive. One of the images is a 'network' one. That means, in a local area network there has to be either a NFS, FTP or HTTP server from which the installation will take place.
HP Vectra VL420 (used as a workstation)
Another VL420 desktop system I also use, has a spare HDD from a previous Windows 2000 server installation (actually, that IDE disk was moved from the other computer where it was a primary one and here it is the second one disk for backup data). The nice things is that it has a HTTP and FTP servers installed (of course, usable if the system is boot from that disk). That was good so I could use one of these servers now.
So, I made a 'network' bootable floppy and booted the first Vectra VL420 (intended to be a Linux server) with it. After a while, it came to a point to choose the installation method (NFS or FTP or HTTP server). At first, I wanted to use the second 'spare' HTTP server at the other Vectra mentioned above, but regardless of what permission I tried to give to the 'Everyone' group of Windows users, I always got the following answer from the Linux setup:
Error: Couldn't get file ... (or something like that)
Then I tried to use the FTP 'spare' server from the second Vectra and at first it also asked for local and remote IP addresses. That time successfully, it started to load a part of the remote Linux files into its memory without any complaint. Soon after, it came to the very same position as Omnibook 6000 did: it got directly to the installation menu, asking a user to choose a language for the installation use.
>From that point, the setup process was almost the same...
I have chosen/confirmed the following items:
- a language to use, besides English(American) as default: I added Unicode and Serbian (both Cyrillic and Latin); - a mouse and keyboard; - a security level - I accepted defaults: 'Standard' for laptop and 'Higher' for server;
The next important task was to choose one of DrakX partitioning options:
- for laptop I chose the 'Use the free space on the Windows partition', because the laptop has one IDE hard disk and I wanted it to use a part of it for Linux (besides existing Windows 2000 Prof. already installed). Windows' Disk Management reported:
Disk 0 15 MB FAT (HP Diagnostics or like)
7.13 GB FAT32 (C: "HPNOTEBOOK")
20.80 GB Free space
The two partitions (FAT & FAT32) were made during the installation procedure using HP's supplied installation CD's.
At the first moment, Linux setup complained that my Windows partition "was too fragmented" and required me to reboot under Windows, run the "defrag" utility, then restart the Mandrake Linux installation. The defragmentation process have taken cca. 1.5 hour to be completed! When restarted the setup, it wanted to use 7.13 GB Windows partition, instead of 20.80 GB. I chose to 'Use the free space'. Then it made partitions for Linux: /dev/hda5 and /dev/hda7.
- for Vectra VL420 I used 'Custom disk partitioning' because there I had two SCSI disks, one of them running Windows 2000 Server already installed, and the other one I wanted to use entirely for a Linux server. BTW, I wasn't sure what the option 'Erase entire disk' would do during its next step (erase a whole disk or a partition?), although it also may be the proper solution too. DrakX recognized the two SCSI disks as sda and sdb and I chose sdb to install Linux. The first step was to 'Clear all' and after that to 'Auto allocate' the space on that second disk. Finally, after a 'Done' it appeared to make /dev/sdb1 and /dev/sdb6 Linux partitions.
HP Omnibook 6000
boot=/dev/hda
map=/boot/map
vga=normal
default="windows"
keytable=/boot/us.klt
prompt
nowarn
timeout=100
message=/boot/message
menu-scheme=wb:bw:wb:bw
image=/boot/vmlinuz
label="linux"
root=/dev/hda5
initrd=/boot/initrd.img
append="quiet devfs=mount acpi=off"
read-only
image=/boot/vmlinuz
label="failsafe"
root=/dev/hda5
initrd=/boot/initrd.img
append="failsafe devfs=nomount acpi=off"
read-only
other=/dev/hda2 <--- /dev/hda1 seems to be reserved for some HP diags.
label="windows"
table=/dev/hda
other=/dev/fd0
label="floppy"
unsafe
HP Vectra VL420 (installed as a desktop client Linux system)
boot=/dev/hda
map=/boot/map
vga=normal
default="windows"
keytable=/boot/us.klt
prompt
nowarn
timeout=100
message=/boot/message
menu-scheme=wb:bw:wb:bw
image=/boot/vmlinuz
label="linux"
root=/dev/hda5
initrd=/boot/initrd.img
append="quiet devfs=mount acpi=off"
vga=788 <--- that line is missing at laptop with LCD screen above.
read-only
image=/boot/vmlinuz
label="linux-nonfb"
root=/dev/hda5
initrd=/boot/initrd.img
append="devfs=mount acpi=off"
read-only
image=/boot/vmlinuz
label="failsafe"
root=/dev/hda5
initrd=/boot/initrd.img
append="failsafe devfs=nomount acpi=off"
read-only
other=/dev/hda1 <--- /dev/hda1 seems not to be reserved for HP diags here.
label="windows" There I have Windows 2000 Professional already
table=/dev/hda installed (probably without HP's supplied CD's).
other=/dev/hdb1 <--- that is the spare disk with Windows 2000 Server.
label="windows2" Actually I had some data on it and used it as a
table=/dev/hdb second, backup disk on that desktop workstation.
map-drive=0x80 I have never tried to boot the computer from it, but
to=0x81 Mandrake's setup offered it as a boot option.
map-drive=0x81 (And that was useful as a FTP server, needed to install
to=0x80 Mandrake Linux on the other box - without DVD drive too).
other=/dev/fd0
label="floppy"
unsafe
HP Vectra VL420 (installed as a desktop Linux system with server features)
boot=/dev/sda <--- /dev/sda is the first SCSI disk where LILO resides (MBR).
map=/boot/map
vga=normal
default="windows"
keytable=/boot/us.klt
prompt
nowarn
timeout=100
message=/boot/message
menu-scheme=wb:bw:wb:bw
image=/boot/vmlinuz
label="linux"
root=/dev/sdb1 <--- /dev/sdb1 is the second SCSI disk where Linux resides.
initrd=/boot/initrd.img
append="quiet devfs=mount acpi=off"
vga=788
read-only
image=/boot/vmlinuz
label="linux-nonfb"
root=/dev/sdb1
initrd=/boot/initrd.img
append="devfs=mount acpi=off"
read-only
image=/boot/vmlinuz-secure
label="linux-secure" <--- something related to the Linux server security?
root=/dev/sdb1
initrd=/boot/initrd-secure.img
append="quiet devfs=mount acpi=off"
read-only
image=/boot/vmlinuz
label="failsafe"
root=/dev/sdb1
initrd=/boot/initrd.img
append="failsafe devfs=nomount acpi=off"
read-only
other=/dev/sda1 <--- /dev/sda1 is the first partition on the first SCSI disk where Windows resides.
label="windows"
table=/dev/sda
>From the examples above, you could see that I have been using various computer forms with also various types of hard disk. Somewhere there is only one IDE drive, somewhere else there are two of them, otherwise there are a couple of SCSI drives etc. Regardless of that, I always tried to put LILO into the MBR - located on the first disk. Now it looks like that Linux finally managed to solve the old 1024 cyl problem. In fact, LILO seems to be capable to boot Linux regardless it is placed close to the rest of Linux partitions or not.
There are some other considerations related to the experiment above, but they are part of the other fine document: Linux+WindowsNT mini-HOWTO.
2004-01-11
Notice: Folks, I often visit some (inter)national ICT conferences all around Serbia and Montenegro, submitting papers and having presentations. For example, here you may see me standing and speaking to the audience. What I want to do is to spread - as wide as possible - the basic idea and the useful mission of the amateur radio hobby. You bet, whenever possible I want my readers to make it with Linux. Besides that, I have been writing various articles for a variety of scientific and other magazines. Here you have a list of the articles I have written, and the papers submitted to the conferences until now.
In case you want to re-publish or forward my volunteer paper works to some journals or other public media around, you are free to contact me. Some of my papers are written in Serbian Cyrillic, some of them are in English and some of them even combined!
- "U prilog I.A.C.", MI (the youth scientists' organization
newspaper), No. 69, 1990.
- "U prilog I.A.C. (2)", MI (the youth scientists' organization
newspaper), No. 70, 1990.
- "Vise od radio-amaterskog hobija", Vojska, No. 163, 1995.
- "Korak ka zvezdama", Vojska, No. 200, 1996.
- "Die Gefahr von Innen - Internet gegen Amateurfunk",
AMSAT-DL Journal, No. 4, Dez./Feb. 96/97.
- "Kakva nam organizacija (ne) treba?", Radioamater,
Feb. 1997.
- "Kakva nam organizacija (ne) treba? (2)", Radioamater,
Apr./May. 1997.
- "Sateliti umiru padajuci", Vojska, No. 235, 1997.
- "The Internet is not the Enemy", QST, Aug. 1998.
- "Novi radio-amateri za novi vek", Antena, June 2000.
- "Racunarske komunikacije putem radio-veza i
zastita pristupa", Bezbednost, No. 3, 2000.
- "Paket-radio - Racunarske komunikacije putem radio-veza",
proceedings, "Info-Teh", Vrnjacka Banja, Serbia, 2001.
- "Racunarske komunikacije putem radio-amaterskih veza",
proceedings, "YU-Info", Kopaonik, Serbia, 2002.
- "Computer Communications over radio", presentation,
"Linux FEST", Belgrade, Serbia, 2002.
- "Paket-radio - Radio-amaterske digitalne veze",
proceedings, "Kongres JISA", Herceg Novi, Montenegro, 2002.
- "Paket-radio (2) - Modemi za radio-veze",
proceedings, "Info-Teh", Vrnjacka Banja, Serbia, 2002.
- "Alternativne racunarske mreze", festival catalog,
"INFOFEST", Budva, Montenegro, 2002.
- "Alternative computer networks", proceedings, "TELFOR",
Belgrade, Serbia, 2002.
- "With rule and regulation improvements to the progress"
proceedings, "TELFOR", Belgrade, Serbia, 2002.
- "Racunarske komunikacije putem radio-amaterskih veza (2)",
proceedings, "YU-Info", Kopaonik, Serbia, 2003.
- "Racunarske komunikacije putem radio-amaterskih veza (3)",
proceedings, "YU-Info", Kopaonik, Serbia, 2003.
- "Paket-radio (3) - Programske mogucnosti na strani servera",
proceedings, "Info-Teh", Vrnjacka Banja, Serbia, 2003.
- "Paket-radio (4) - Legal rules and regulations in the amateur
computer networks", proceedings, "Info-Teh", Vrnjacka Banja,
Serbia, 2003.
- "Packet-radio (2) - With rule and regulation improvements to the progress",
proceedings, "Kongres JISA", Herceg Novi, Montenegro, 2003.
- "Alternativne racunarske mreze (2)", festival catalog,
"INFOFEST", Budva, Montenegro, 2003.
- "Alternativne racunarske komunikacije putem radio-veza",
Info M, 6-7/2003.
- "Legal Rules and Regulations in the Amateur Radio Computer Networks",
proceedings, "22nd ARRL and TAPR Digital Communications Conference",
Hartford, CT USA, 2003.
- "Favoritism", IEEE Potentials, Oct/Nov 2003
- "Alternative computer networks (2)", proceedings, "TELFOR",
Belgrade, Serbia, 2003.
- "With rule and regulation improvements to the progress (2)"
proceedings, "TELFOR", Belgrade, Serbia, 2003.
- "XI Telekomunikacioni forum - TELFOR 2003", Info M, 8/2003.
- "Aktivnosti organizacije IEEE Computer Society - YU Chapter"
Info M, 8/2003.
Besides these articles published and papers presented, I have been studying for an M.Sc. degree in computing. I am also the member of the following associations: IEEE Computer Society, IEEE Communications Society and ACM. In addition, I have been voluntarily working on establishing an academy computer network that would use the amateur radio stations as the media. Such networks exist somewhere else on the globe and I invite their administrators to contact me in order to cooperate.
Copyright (c) 2004 by Miroslav Misko Skoric, YT7MPB.
Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.1 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no Invariant Sections, with no Front-Cover Texts, and with no Back-Cover Texts. A copy of the license is available from http://www.fsf.org/licenses/fdl.html.
Use the information in this document at your own risk. I disavow any potential liability of this document. Use of the concepts, examples, and/or other content of this document is entirely at your own risk.
All copyrights are owned by their owners, unless specifically noted otherwise. Use of a term in this document should not be regarded as affecting the validity of any trademark or service mark.
Naming of particular products or brands should not be seen as endorsements.
You are strongly recommended to take a backup of your system before major installation and backups at regular intervals.
In addition to the Lilo docs, there are a number of mini-howto's that can be useful for your needs. All of them are called ``Linux+foobar-OS'', for some foobar-OS, they deal with coexistence of Linux and other operating system(s). For example, "NT OS Loader + Linux mini-HOWTO" by Bernd Reichert, describes how to add an entry for Linux under existing Windows NT Loader's menu. Next, you have Linux+WindowsNT mini-HOWTO by myself, covering how to add an entry for NT under existing Linux Lilo menu (more detailed than here). Also, "Multiboot-with-LILO" describes how the various Windows flavors can be made to coexist with Linux.
This mini-HOWTO would be improved from time to time. If you think that the HOWTO on your Linux installation CD is some out-of-date, you may check for newest release on the Internet. It could be found within the main Linux Documentation Project homepage or this one: Linux Documentation Project.
This version of mini-HOWTO can thanks to:
Cameron Spitzer (cls@truffula.sj.ca.us)
Alessandro Rubini (rubini@linux.it)
Tony Harris (tony@nmr.mgh.harvard.edu)
Marc Tanguy (mtanguy@ens.uvsq.fr)
Dragomir Kalaba, a local Linux 'guru'
Any comments or suggestions can be mailed to my email address: skoric at eunet dot yu
These are intended as the primary starting points to
get the background information as well as show you how to solve
a specific problem.
Some relevant HOWTOs are Bootdisk, Installation, SCSI and UMSDOS.
The main site for these is the
LDP archive
at Metalab (formerly known as Sunsite).
These are the smaller free text relatives to the HOWTOs.
Some relevant mini-HOWTOs are
Backup-With-MSDOS, Diskless, LILO, Large Disk,
Linux+DOS+Win95+OS2, Linux+OS2+DOS, Linux+Win95,
Linux+WindowsNT, Linux+NT-Loader, NFS-Root,
Win95+Win+Linux, ZIP Drive, FBB packet-radio BBS.
You can find these at the same place as the HOWTOs, usually in a sub directory
called mini. Note that these are scheduled to be converted into SGML and
become proper HOWTOs in the near future.
In most distributions of Linux there is a document directory installed, have a look in the /usr/doc directory. where most packages store their main documentation and README files etc. Also you will here find the HOWTO archive ( /usr/doc/HOWTO) of ready formatted HOWTOs and also the mini-HOWTO archive ( /usr/doc/HOWTO/mini) of plain text documents.
Many of the configuration files mentioned earlier can be found in the
/etc
directory. In particular you will want to work with the
/etc/fstab
file that sets up the mounting of partitions
and possibly also
/etc/mdtab
file that is used for the md system to set up RAID.
The kernel source in /usr/src/linux is, of course, the ultimate documentation. In other words, use the source, Luke. It should also be pointed out that the kernel comes not only with source code which is even commented (well, partially at least) but also an informative documentation directory. If you are about to ask any questions about the kernel you should read this first, it will save you and many others a lot of time and possibly embarrassment.
Also have a look in your system log file (
/var/log/messages)
to see what is going on and in particular how the booting went if
too much scrolled off your screen. Using tail -f /var/log/messages
in a separate window or screen will give you a continuous update of what is
going on in your system.
You can also take advantage of the
/proc
file system that is a window into the inner workings of your system.
Use cat rather than more to view the files as they are
reported as being zero length. Reports are that less works well here.
There is a huge number of informative web pages out there and by their very nature they change quickly so don't be too surprised if these links become quickly outdated.
A good starting point is of course the Linux Documentation Project home page, or this one: Linux Documentation Project, an information central for documentation, project pages and much, much more.
Please let me know if you have any other leads that can be of interest.
In the end you might find yourself unable to solve your problems and need help from someone else. The most efficient way is either to ask someone local or in your nearest Linux user group, search the web for the nearest one.
Another possibility is to ask on Usenet News in one of the many, many newsgroups available. The problem is that these have such a high volume and noise (called low signal-to-noise ratio) that your question can easily fall through unanswered.
No matter where you ask it is important to ask well or you will not be taken seriously. Saying just my disk does not work is not going to help you and instead the noise level is increased even further and if you are lucky someone will ask you to clarify.
Instead describe your problems in some detail that will enable people to help you. The problem could lie somewhere you did not expect. Therefore you are advised to list up the following information on your system:
Remember that booting text is logged to /var/log/messages which can
answer most of the questions above. Obviously if the drives fail you might not
be able to get the log saved to disk but you can at least scroll back up the
screen using the SHIFT and PAGE UP keys. It may also be useful to
include part of this in your request for help but do not go overboard, keep
it brief as a complete log file dumped to Usenet News is more than a
little annoying.
