Re: hdc siezed by windoze

[Jerry Human]

Thank you for your efforts and time answering my plea for help. I'm sorry for the delay answering but I had to be at work this morning at 5:00 a.m. Below is a copy of the original message that contains all the facts I have at this time. Please read it carefully as some parts contain a lot of detail.

The Story:

About two months ago I installed a third EIDE hard drive (WD 102AA 10.2
gig) on my box. The install itself wasn't a problem, it was recognized
and formatted easily. I divided the drive into four primary partitions.
Soon I discovered a problem booting between Win95B and RH 6.2. RH 6.2
was installed on the first primary partition and the swap file was put
in the second partition, the third partition was formatted ext2 for the
purpose of storing non-RH 6.2 programs and data to help avoid file
corruption, and the fourth partition was formatted vfat32 for saving
downloads from the web and installing progs I wanted to test to avoid
Win95B corruption.

The RH 6.2 install went flawlessly and everything except the servers
(ftp server, lan server, etc.) was installed without a hitch. Booting to
Win95B is the default and booting RH 6.2 is accomplished with a boot
floppy. After booting Win95B and formatting the fourth partition and
testing to verify accessibility and dependability I rebooted RH and
found it wasn't there!!!

I rebooted Win95B and checked the WD support services. I d/led a diag
and checked the drive finding the ATA/66 option was turned off and
turned it on. That seemed to fix the problem. RH booted fine. At that
point I started using the drive in both OSes. RH worked great and Win95B
had plenty of extra space. Like I said before, that was a few months
ago. Now suddenly, RH won't boot!!!

The boot process hangs immediately after the kernel is read from the
boot floppy.
Nothing was done to alter the RH install, it
is used as a client box to surf the net, learn gnome, gimp, play games
installed by the RH install, and just learn more about Linux in general.
None of the config files have been changed since the original install
and setup a few months ago. Originally two boot disks were made. Booting
with either disk acts exactly the same so I can rule out boot disk
corruption.

It seems to me that Win95B will occasionally write an id to the root
partition of the drive even though it only has access to the fourth
partition and that id corrupts the RH boot. How can this be avoided? The
problem only occurs when booting RH after working in Win95B. Once RH
boots, the box can be started in RH any number of times without problem.
No degrading of the RH boot was noticed since the original ATA/66
problem. This problem just happened, no hardware/software settings were
changed for Win95B or RH. Also, I have checked but didn't find any
viruses.

The actual error messages:

        Warning: Unable to open an initial Console.

        Kernel Panic: No init found. Try passing init= option to kernel.
 

The Specs:

486DX50 VLB
QD6580 VLV EIDE controller, i/o interface
        hda     Maxtor 1 gig
        hdb     WD 340 meg
        hdc     WD 10.2 gig
        hdd     NEC 40x CD

The motherboard setup only accommodates two IDE devices on port 0 irq
14, however, the controller allows two EIDE devices on port 0 irq 14 and
allows two EIDE devices on port 1 irq 15 and has its own bios which is
enabled. Ports 0 and 1 has been used for a few years without a problem
until the WD 10.2 gig and RH 6.2 was installed.

I know I need and want to get a new box but that is financially
impossible at this time. Actually, I eventually intend to build a new
box and use the WD 10.2 gig in it as hda and use the 486DX50 VLB as a
firewall.
 

"M. Neidorff" wrote:

At 05:34 PM 08/25/2000 -0400, you wrote:
>Something is different due to the separate hard disk. As I stated
>before, the RH 6.2 install on the same hard disk as Win95 is not
>affected, only the install on the third hard disk.

hmmmm. Is the 3rd HDD the master on the secondary channel or the slave?

Yes, Master, irq 15. First attempted to install RH 6.2 on hda5, where I quickly learned that 600 meg wasn't enough room for a robust client install. That is the reason I got the third drive in the first place. Perhaps I should summarize my configuration, also:

hda    1.2 gig
hda1     C:    Win95 boot and PC DOS 7.0 install, PC DOS is booted with a floppy
hda3     E:    Win95 actual program install and applications
hda5     /        RH 6.2 original limited install, basically text console only, X installed but having space problems

hdb    340 meg
hdb1    D:    storage for downloads and program testing to avoid corruption of C: and E: and virus protection
hdb2    swap    20 meg swap partition/file for hda5 install of RH 6.2

hdc    10.2 gig
hdc1    /        new RH 6.2 install on 3 gig partition, everything but the servers
hdc2    swap    100 meg swap partition for RH 6.2 on hdc1
hdc3    ext2    partition to store and test downloads; same as D: but for Linux
hdc4    vfat    additional storage for downloads and program testing to avoid corruption of C: and E: and virus protection
                        when I use this area a lot from Win95 is when the problem arose

hdd    40x CD

I think it should be the master if you have a CDROM on the secondary
channel.  (I don't remember the details from your original message)

Details are above. I hope they help you spot something I've overlooked.

>Can you think of something that might occur (such as Win95 putting its
>own id on the disk to reference the vfat32 partition) that I haven't
>mentioned? This problem occurred after using Win95 for several days
>without booting RH 6.2.

I really don't think that MS is responsible in this case. (My machine dual
boots to W95 & RH6.2 via lilo without a hitch)

Yes, but I'll bet both are on the same physical disk.

 Can you use an install disk to get started?  Once the install starts, you can then switch consoles
(alt-F2, alt-F3...)until you get a root prompt ("#").  At that point, make
a directory and try to mount your root partition there:
#pwd
/
#mkdir /trash
#mount /dev/hd?? /trash

(you will have to fill in the 2 question marks with the drive & partition
of the root file system.  For example, if you have the / partition on the
second partition of the disk on the secondary ide controller, then the 2
question marks would be replaced with 'd2'.  Does this help?

No, I have used this method previously when just starting to learn Linux. At this time, RH 6.2 is not detected by the install disk and attempts to initialize 'empty' partitions. However, as stated above, everything is there. I can and have booted the very small install on hda4 and looked at the hdc1 install.

Another item that you caused me to remember. Lilo is installed but in a 'passive' mode. That is, it is installed and handles boot of RH 6.2 on hdc1 only, there is no menu selection for other OS's. When I boot RH, lilo runs and automatically boots the hdc install. Perhaps this is where the problem lies. It was installed and configured by the original RH installation and copied to the boot floppy. Is there a file you think I should check for corruption?

Thank you.