SUSE 9.1; booting problems

[Wilbert]

Not really video related, but I hope some people can help me :)

I installed SUSE 9.1 yesterday, and got two problems:

1) No network access. My network card is an external usb device (wireless), maybe that's a problem?

2) Far worse. I can't boot W2K anymore. When I start my pc I can choose between Windows and Linux, and if I select Windows the message

boot(hd0,0)
filesystem type is fat ...
chainloader+1

appears and my pc is crashes.

Btw, I put linux on the second partition (logical, ext2) of my first hdd.

[shevegen]

Gosh, I fear I cant really help you but i will still try.

My experience was that Linux does not really have a big problem with
USB devices. I am using an externel USB Hard Disc (160GB) and it works fine. (Although, it makes too much noise no matter what OS access it, seems cheap discs arent sooooooo good always...)

You should be able to see all USB devices with
fdisk -l
and
lsusb

like
/dev/hdb1 * 1 9756 78365038+ 83 Linux

USB devices have the name like sda sdb etc..
so it would be sth like
/dev/sda1

Can mount it if wanted with mount /dev/sda1 /mnt,
or wherver you want it mounted. I think SuSE per default has it auto-mounted somewhere, look/modify
/etc/fstab
to suit your needs.

Ok, wireless? Data transmitted via funk? I sadly have no experience with wireless. This seems a tiny bit too advanced for me but maybe I can help searching a bit if i know what device.

"I can't boot W2K anymore."
Yes, that is annoying, I agree. Do you use LILO or GRUB as boot loader? I assume GRUB, and a MBR.

[thoralf]

Originally posted by Wilbert
1) No network access. My network card is an external usb device (wireless), maybe that's a problem?

phew, I'm pretty clueless here ... My first attemp would be to check if your kernel did find the usb device at all (see shevegens post), if it did, you probably need to map it to dev/eth0 or something like this and play around with ifconfig afterwards.

2) Far worse. I can't boot W2K anymore. When I start my pc I can choose between Windows and Linux, and if I select Windows the message

boot(hd0,0)
filesystem type is fat ...
chainloader+1

appears and my pc is crashes.

Btw, I put linux on the second partition (logical, ext2) of my first hdd.
That's a bad thing. There was a bug related to parted which caused the partition table to get messed up during the installation of recent linux distros in some rare cases - see this article (http://portal.suse.com/sdb/en/2004/05/fhassel_windows_not_booting91.html) from the suse support database for more explanations and the cure.
I hope you are not affected by this nastie. Apart from this, is your win2k-partition really fat?

Hope this helps,
Thoralf.

[Wilbert]

Yes, that is annoying, I agree. Do you use LILO or GRUB as boot loader? I assume GRUB, and a MBR.
Yes, GRUB.


That's a bad thing. There was a bug related to parted which caused the partition table to get messed up during the installation of recent linux distros in some rare cases (...)
I saw that link this morning, I wish I saw it before installing SUSE 9.1. Btw, the partition is fat.

I will try your other suggestions and report back.

[Wilbert]

Maybe someone can help me with the following:

I need the file "parted.img" which is contained in "parted.img.gz" from the link thoralf gave:

ftp://ftp.suse.com/pub/suse/i386/update/9.1/misc/parted/

There are win utilities to compress it, but for some reason it doesn't work here (invalid archive blabla).

I also would like to have the following file:

"The directory /dosutils/rawrite/ on the first CD/DVD includes the program
rawrite.exe that can be used to write the image to a floppy."

Could someone mail me those files (ie parted.img and rawrite.exe) to wilbertdijkhof at yahoo.com? Thanks very much :)

The solution is given here (two: setting hdd to LBA, and updated driver):

http://www.ulx.hu/modules.php?name=Knowledge&op=show&id=753

I hope I get it to work :)

[KpeX]

Originally posted by Wilbert
Could someone mail me those files (ie parted.img and rawrite.exe) to wilbertdijkhof at yahoo.com? Thanks very much :) You've got mail :)

[mikeX]

@ shevegen:

regarding your noisy hard-drive:

you can install 'hdparm' and see if it supports 'Acoustic Management' which roughly means that you can make your drive speed down a bit to reduce it's noise output. expect a slowdown in data transfers though.

i'm not sure though whether hdparm works with USB drives [it should if the IDE/ATAPI driver subsystem is also used for accesing usb mass storage devices]

[Wilbert]

Setting my hdd to LBA worked. W2K is accessible again!


Ok, wireless? Data transmitted via funk? I sadly have no experience with wireless. This seems a tiny bit too advanced for me but maybe I can help searching a bit if i know what device.
What's funk?

It's this one: WL-012 Wireless USB adapter

drivers: http://www.sitecom.com/driversmanuals.php?grp_id=6&prod_id=133&search=1

They have linux drivers! I will start linux to see whether it sees the USB device.

[avih]

Wilbert, regarding the no-boot issue, here's an 'executive summary' i sent to a friend (with fedora) on this issue:

------------------------

1. when installing Fedore core 2, or other linux distros with some 2.6
version lernel (2.6.5 at least i think), and asking a dual boot
configuration, then grub (the boot managet that's incharge of the dual
boot) alteres the geometry information on the disk. the data is not
harmed, and the geometry is reported correctly when accessed in LBA
mode. it's only CHS mode that's altered, but that's what windows is
looking for and therefore, cannot boot. this happens on SOME win2k/xp
systems (i'd say 5%-15% of them by reading around).

2. it can be prevented by running a live linux cd (i.e. the fedore
core rescue cd, or knoppix (my addition)), before installing fedora,
using fdisk -l /dev/hda to gather the geometry information (i.e. linux
hda=14593,255,63), and then when installing fedora, input these
numbers manually instead of letting it do that automatically.

3. for computers that have been 'struck' by this bug, it could be
fixed too without any loss of information as, again, no data was lost.
in a nutshell: read the geometry in lba mode, write the values to the
disk (sfdisk -d /dev/hda | sfdisk --no-reread -H255 /dev/hda). but u
should sun the 1st command alone 1st to make sure it doesn't output
any warnings or errors that will harm the process. here's a sample
output of the 1st command:


$ sfdisk -d /dev/hda
# partition table of /dev/hda
unit: sectors

/dev/hda1 : start= 63, size= 16771797, Id= 7, bootable
/dev/hda2 : start= 16771860, size=217632555, Id= f
/dev/hda3 : start= 0, size= 0, Id= 0
/dev/hda4 : start= 0, size= 0, Id= 0
/dev/hda5 : start= 16771923, size=104856192, Id= 7
/dev/hda6 : start=121628178, size=112776237, Id= 7



more info here. (http://lwn.net/Articles/86835/)
------------------------------------------------

avih

[Wilbert]

@avih,

I have the "bad file system" problem when looking at my partitions in PM (although they are accessible in W2K). Does your fix also solve that?

[thoralf]

Originally posted by Wilbert
I have the "bad file system" problem when looking at my partitions in PM (although they are accessible in W2K).
PM = Partition Magic? I wouldn't worry, don't trust this software too much ... Have a go with other 3rd party tools (i.e., Norton's disc doctor).