SATA Dual Boot help ...

[Tony Alfrey]

Ben Duncan wrote:
> Ok, I have a custom machine I am setting up. It has 2 SATA II hard disks 
> in it.
> 
> I have set up LINUX on the first disk and the second disk is a 1TB, that
> is split with WinXp on the first partition and the rest for Linux .
> 
> I can boot the WinXp disk fine, if it is the FIRST disk or even "select"
> it as the boot disk in the bios selection, however I cannot get LILO
> to boot it correctly.
> 
> When the selection is made using LILO, I get "LI 0101010101 ....."
> 
> any suggestions ?
> 
> Thanks
> 
> 

Some time ago, I had a problem like this which I beat on forever.  I 
finally installed M$ on an IDE drive separate from the SATA drives, but 
I still had problems getting LILO to boot the M$ partition.  I 
discovered that the problem was an issue of disk geometry.  I wrote up a 
HOW-TO that somehow never got posted on linux-sxs but here is the crux 
of the problem:

I wrote

"To boot The Evil OS, it's necessary to make it's boot loader think that 
it is on the first drive in the boot sequence.  To do this with LILO, 
it's necessary to change the mapping of the disk device numbers in the 
portion of the liloconfig file dedicated to The Evil OS."

Then LILO looks like this (for me, note the IDE drive for M$ on hda). 
The important part is down about half-way in LILO config where the drive 
is mapped.

# LILO configuration

#global parameters

# disk geometry
disk = /dev/sda
     bios = 0x80
disk = /dev/sdb
    bios = 0x81
disk = /dev/hda
    bios = 0x82

message = /boot/message
timeout = 80
prompt
lba32

# Linux is the label for the default boot partition
default = Linux
boot = /dev/sda

#These are the locations for the initrd file and rood directory for the 
first Linux installation
image = /boot/vmlinuz
     label = Linux
     initrd = /boot/initrd
     optional
     root = /dev/sda2
     vga = 0x31a
     append = "splash=silent desktop resume=/dev/sdb3 showopts"


#This is the location for the boot sector and partition table for the 
Windows partition
other = /dev/hda1
     label = hda1-Windows
     table = /dev/hda

#The IDE drive must be mapped to the location of the first hard disk
     map-drive = 0x80
       to = 0x82
     map-drive = 0x82
       to = 0x80

#The fail-safe boot for the first Linux installation
image = /boot/vmlinuz
     label = Failsafe
     initrd = /boot/initrd
     optional
     root = /dev/sda2
     vga = normal
     append = "showopts ide=nodma apm=off acpi=off noresume nosmp noapic 
maxcpus=0 3"

#The memory test boot
image = /boot/memtest.bin
     label = Memory_Test
     optional
     append = ""
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Now I'm sure there are gurus about that may critique this, but it works 
form me.



-- 
Tony Alfrey
tonyalfrey at earthlink.net
"I'd Rather Be Sailing"