SuSE Linux: Versions up to (including) 7.0
This article refers to an older version of SuSE Linux.
Some of the information in this article may be outdated.
Also, some links may not be valid.
LI -
or at another incomplete piece of the word LILO (Refer to
"LILO fails: Error messages and their interpretation"
(kgw_lilo_errmsg.html)).
Recent BIOSes partly allow access to additional devices, for example, up to four instead of two EIDE disks. Some very recent combinations of BIOS and SCSI host adapters include the option to "shift" the SCSI disks to the first place to make them bootable. Unfortunately, these features are not standard yet.
A lot of SCSI host adapters are able to "show" the system a different geometry of the disks. The last chapter 6.2 "SCSI details" of the Large-Disk-HOWTO /usr/share/doc/howto/en/Large-Disk-HOWTO.gz gives an overview.
Despite this, the 1024 cylinder limitation remains. This limitation may become more restrictive by using the LILO linear option (kgw_lilo_linear.html).
For clarity, the phrase "1024 cylinder limitation" describes the accessible area of a disk.
What choices do you have with regard to that restriction?
If you have a foreign partition settled completely within cylinder 1024 and Linux permits read and write access to the associated file system (e.g., FAT or Win95-VFAT), you might install LILO data, except the boot sector, there. Unfortunately, this procedure is not reliable, because the foreign operating system might cause confusion, if the partition outreaches cylinder 1023 (and you have no chance to save LILO data within cylinder 1024) it would make it worse)
Warning: Beware of installing LILO boot sector into a foreign partition, because the associated file system will be damaged.
Consequently, you should use the starting point of an extended partition (if located within 1024 cylinder limitation) or MBR for installing LILO boot sector
# LILO configuration file foreign partition # Start LILO global Section boot=/dev/hda # installation target backup=/dos/LINUX/mbr_hda.bak # backup old MBR install=/dos/LINUX/boot.b # LILO and map=/dos/LINUX/map # Map file in /dos/LINUX! message=/dos/LINUX/message # optional prompt timeout=100 # Waiting at the Prompt: 10 s vga = normal # End LILO global section # # Linux bootable partition config begins image = /dos/LINUX/First_Kernel # Kernel here! root = /dev/Your_Root_Device # Root partition here! label = linux # Linux bootable partition config ends # # DOS bootable partition config begins other = /dev/hda1 # MSDOS-System device label = dos loader = /dos/LINUX/chain.b table = /dev/hda # DOS bootable partition config ends
/sbin/lilo -C /dos/LINUX/lilo.confREADY!
Protect LILO data from any write access (such as file relocating by means of defragmentation tools, which will cause LILO malfunction)
At last you should assign DOS file attributes "system" and "hide" to all files in X:\LINUX (X means the MS-DOS device mounted as /dos9)
boot=/dev/Ext_Partition # Your extended Partition
After installation of LILO, mark the extended partition on disk 1 as bootable and unmark the other primary partitions with fdisk.