From Bugzilla Helper: User-Agent: Mozilla/4.77 [en] (X11; U; Linux 2.4.2-2 i686) Description of problem: Computer DELL Latitude C600 laptop with 20GB HD. First partition is NTFS win2000. Size: 4 GB. Win2000 boot loader in MBR. ext2 Linux /hda2=/boot (23333KB) and /hda5=/ (remaining) partitions follows. Upgrade from RH7.0 to 7.1 or fresh install of 7.1. Selected "linear" in lilo. At end of install installer stated that lba32 is the correct choice (there is no lba32 button, but un-selecting "linear" does just this: bad dialog design see bug 14351 and related). Then could not boot linux from win2000 boot loader. Tried to modify lilo configuration but failed. 1: attempt to boot from /boot using rescue floppy fails: message about partitions unproperly unmounted and needing verifying. 2: Could see partition when booting from RH 7.1 CD binary 1 / linux rescue. Verified the partitions from there. Still same problem as before. CD's bought shrink-wrap (not downloaded). Problem disappear when un-selecting "linear" during installation. How reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: 0.Dell latitude laptop with cd-rom in bay only: attach floppy drive to parallel port to allow creation of emergency boot disk (likely unimportant to reproduce the bug if you have already such a floppy or an internal floppy drive but that's how it happened on my machine). 1.Win2k in first partition exceeding 1024 cyl & Win2k boot loader in MBR to start lilo (not sure it's important) /boot in partition past 1024 cyl (essential). 2.Install RH7.1 from cd's select linear in lilo configuration 3.Try to boot new installation. 4.Try to use emergency boot disk. 5.Try to use boot from RH7.1 binary 1 and verify partitions. 6.Install RH7.1 (re-format /boot and / partitions) un-selecting "linear" in lilo configuration. Actual Results: 2. => installer at end of install complains that lba32 should be used 3 => lilo failure 4 => fails msg about checking the partitions 5 => still can't boot same msg as before (or maybe I missed something...) 6 => works but old data lost Expected Results: I wish that the program will have used lba32 by default (ide) linear for scsi I wish i would have been able to recover partition (but maybe that was possible and I missed something. In which case I wish there was a HOW-To about this. Additional info:
We don't have this hardware, so I can't really reproduce it. I'm trying to understand exactly what the problem is... Is the problem that selecting 'linear' in the LILO screen causes the system to be unbootable?
The fact to select "linear" in the LILO screen indeed causes the system to be unbootable. In addition when selecting "linear" in the LILO screen the installation program gives a warning that lba32 should have been used.
Are things ok if you don't select 'linear'?
Everything is ok when linear is not selected. That's how I've solved this issue, and the laptop has run very reliably since then.
Ok. We've made some changes to the bootloader that should avoid this problem in the future.