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Content by Christian Hansen (original HERE). Modified by Major Tom.
Note: Most local files linked from these pages are missing unfortunately.
During the last steps of installing the distro on your system, you might have told the install
program how, and from where, Linux is supposed to boot from in the future.
You might have survived through those steps, but most likely you have stuffed a non MCA kernel
on your harddrive, derived from your distro, and not from the install diskette which have caused you
so much suffering until now.
There is a tweak. Get the image file (1440Kb) and make a good old Slackware,
boot diskette. (Stolen from www.dgmicro.com and described on Su Wadlows pages. Old 2.0.35 kernel
but it works).
Boot your machine from the Slackware diskette. When it has finished booting, and you see the
prompt, type:
root=/dev/sda1
assuming you installed your distro on the first partition of the first SCSI drive.
Now, if you managed to start Linux with your harddrive as root, switch the Slackware diskette to the
diskette you used to install your distro, and mount it by typing:
mount -t auto /dev/fd0 /mnt/floppy
Copy the kernel from the floppy to you harddrive by typing:
cp /mnt/floppy/vmlinuz /boot/vmlinuz
You now have to run lilo, to be able to boot from the harddrive. First you must prepare
instructions for lilo, by creating a file named /etc/lilo.conf. If you have not yet familiarised
yourself with Linux editors, you could simply type:
cat<<EOF>>/etc/lilo.conf
boot=/dev/sda
map=/boot/map
install=/boot/boot.b
image=/boot/vmlinuz
label=linux
root=/dev/sda1
read-only
EOF
and then activate the settings of the configuration file by issuing the lilo command:
/sbin/lilo
Go: 'shutdown -r now' (=Dos Ctrl+Alt+Del) and see if it works. A note on the Slackware boot
diskette: it is kernel
2.0.35, and like a pair of jumpstart cables when your car is frosted. You can get the machine
up and humming, but wouldn't like to use it for travelling. But it is a good idea to save it as
a rescue diskette, if you system breaks later on.
It might not be as easy as outlined above, since parameters could be wrong for your distro
and setup.
What I am trying to say is, that you must somehow get a working MCA kernel from whatever source,
to the directory on your harddrive which holds boot stuff. (Normally: /boot ).
But then again, it is not the law of gravity, that you have to place a MCA kernel on your
harddrive, and boot form there. It is quite possible to leave whatever dysfunctional kernel your
distro placed on the harddrive during the installation process, and boot every time from a
special floppy, as long as the latter holds: a bootloader loadlin.sys, your precious MCA kernel,
and a textfile (sort of *autoexec.bat*) with directives how to find your harddisk. Maybe I'll
expand on this later.
Last update: 09 Feb 2001
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