I've been trying to get a new AMD64 system set up and booted, with no
luck so far. Installing SuSE 9.2 on an Asus A8V. There are 4 SATA drives
on the system, two on the Promise PDC20378 in RAID0 mode, and two on the
onboard VIA 6420/8237. I have Windows XP Pro SP1 installed on the PDC,
and I've formatted the other two SATA drives as Dynamic Disks, so that I
can setup striping on them in both Windows and Linux.

SATA drive sdc has 3 interesting partitions - 512MB for Linux swap,
32MB ext2fs for /boot, and 5GB for Linux software raid root.

drive sdd has 2 partitions - 512MB for Linux swap, and 5GB for Linux
software raid root.

After a lot of googling I found that grub doesn't support LDM, but lilo
is supposed to. The SuSE installer has no trouble copying all the
packages onto the 10GB /dev/md0. But I can't get this thing to boot at all.

When I try to run lilo with boot=/dev/sdc and boot this drive, I get
L 99 99 99 99 99 <screenful of 99s> and nothing else.

I tried installing lilo onto a floppy instead, so at least I get my boot
menu now. But when I try to boot SuSE I get "BDA too big" and then
nothing. So far googling for this error message hasn't turned up
anything. What next?

--
-- Howard Chu
Chief Architect, Symas Corp. Director, Highland Sun
http://www.symas.com http://highlandsun.com/hyc
Symas: Premier OpenSource Development and Support

"Howard Chu" <XYZ.hyc@highlandsun.com> wrote in message
news:f7-dnSdua8tQk43fRVn-2g@comcast.com...
> I've been trying to get a new AMD64 system set up and booted, with no luck
> so far. Installing SuSE 9.2 on an Asus A8V. There are 4 SATA drives on the
> system, two on the Promise PDC20378 in RAID0 mode, and two on the onboard
> VIA 6420/8237. I have Windows XP Pro SP1 installed on the PDC, and I've
> formatted the other two SATA drives as Dynamic Disks, so that I can setup
> striping on them in both Windows and Linux.
>
> SATA drive sdc has 3 interesting partitions - 512MB for Linux swap,
> 32MB ext2fs for /boot, and 5GB for Linux software raid root.

SuSE is not your friend for weird setups, and Promise is not your friend for
*ANYTHING*.

> drive sdd has 2 partitions - 512MB for Linux swap, and 5GB for Linux
> software raid root.
>
> After a lot of googling I found that grub doesn't support LDM, but lilo is
> supposed to. The SuSE installer has no trouble copying all the packages
> onto the 10GB /dev/md0. But I can't get this thing to boot at all.
>
> When I try to run lilo with boot=/dev/sdc and boot this drive, I get
> L 99 99 99 99 99 <screenful of 99s> and nothing else.
>
> I tried installing lilo onto a floppy instead, so at least I get my boot
> menu now. But when I try to boot SuSE I get "BDA too big" and then
> nothing. So far googling for this error message hasn't turned up anything.
> What next?

SuSE has badly, badly broken grub in a lot of different ways. If you want to
explore a new, weird hardware setup like this, I urge you to explore Fedora
Core 3 instead.

Nico Kadel-Garcia wrote:
> "Howard Chu" <XYZ.hyc@highlandsun.com> wrote in message
> news:f7-dnSdua8tQk43fRVn-2g@comcast.com...
>
>>I've been trying to get a new AMD64 system set up and booted, with no luck
>>so far. Installing SuSE 9.2 on an Asus A8V. There are 4 SATA drives on the
>>system, two on the Promise PDC20378 in RAID0 mode, and two on the onboard
>>VIA 6420/8237. I have Windows XP Pro SP1 installed on the PDC, and I've
>>formatted the other two SATA drives as Dynamic Disks, so that I can setup
>>striping on them in both Windows and Linux.
>>
>>SATA drive sdc has 3 interesting partitions - 512MB for Linux swap,
>>32MB ext2fs for /boot, and 5GB for Linux software raid root.

> SuSE is not your friend for weird setups, and Promise is not your friend for
> *ANYTHING*.

I'm beginning to see that...

The lilo that SuSE bundles is 22.3.4. I downloaded the source for 22.6.1
on another system and built that, which works a bit better. lilo
actually loads off the hard drive now and gives the boot menu. It loads
the kernel but setting up the root partition (which is raid0 on
/dev/md0) fails. At least it's better than the undocumented 'L 99 99 99...'

....

OK, I played around some more and used the Rescue boot to tweak the
default initrd. Since the kernel wasn't automatically detecting my raid0
root partition, I edited the linuxrc in the initrd and stuck an explicit
"mdadm -A /dev/md0 /dev/sdc3 /dev/sdd2" in there. Finally the system is
booting all the way up.

>>drive sdd has 2 partitions - 512MB for Linux swap, and 5GB for Linux
>>software raid root.
>>
>>After a lot of googling I found that grub doesn't support LDM, but lilo is
>>supposed to. The SuSE installer has no trouble copying all the packages
>>onto the 10GB /dev/md0. But I can't get this thing to boot at all.
>>
>>When I try to run lilo with boot=/dev/sdc and boot this drive, I get
>>L 99 99 99 99 99 <screenful of 99s> and nothing else.

--
-- Howard Chu
Chief Architect, Symas Corp. Director, Highland Sun
http://www.symas.com http://highlandsun.com/hyc
Symas: Premier OpenSource Development and Support

"Howard Chu" <XYZ.hyc@highlandsun.com> wrote in message
news:ZKudnRDph9UJxo3fRVn-3Q@comcast.com...
> Nico Kadel-Garcia wrote:
>> "Howard Chu" <XYZ.hyc@highlandsun.com> wrote in message
>> news:f7-dnSdua8tQk43fRVn-2g@comcast.com...
>>
>>>I've been trying to get a new AMD64 system set up and booted, with no
>>>luck so far. Installing SuSE 9.2 on an Asus A8V. There are 4 SATA drives
>>>on the system, two on the Promise PDC20378 in RAID0 mode, and two on the
>>>onboard VIA 6420/8237. I have Windows XP Pro SP1 installed on the PDC,
>>>and I've formatted the other two SATA drives as Dynamic Disks, so that I
>>>can setup striping on them in both Windows and Linux.
>>>
>>>SATA drive sdc has 3 interesting partitions - 512MB for Linux swap,
>>>32MB ext2fs for /boot, and 5GB for Linux software raid root.
>
>> SuSE is not your friend for weird setups, and Promise is not your friend
>> for *ANYTHING*.
>
> I'm beginning to see that...
>
> The lilo that SuSE bundles is 22.3.4. I downloaded the source for 22.6.1
> on another system and built that, which works a bit better. lilo actually
> loads off the hard drive now and gives the boot menu. It loads the kernel
> but setting up the root partition (which is raid0 on /dev/md0) fails. At
> least it's better than the undocumented 'L 99 99 99...'
>
> ...
>
> OK, I played around some more and used the Rescue boot to tweak the
> default initrd. Since the kernel wasn't automatically detecting my raid0
> root partition, I edited the linuxrc in the initrd and stuck an explicit
> "mdadm -A /dev/md0 /dev/sdc3 /dev/sdd2" in there. Finally the system is
> booting all the way up.

Great! And thanks for posting your working solution.

By the way, software RAID is not your friend either. You may have noticed
that.....

SuSE is known to have distributed broken versions of LILO in the past. 22.3
is pretty out-of-date. Glad to hear you downloaded 22.6.1, the current
release. It compiles in and supports the 64-bit environment.

The LILO 99 error code is documented in the man page for "lilo". You should
have received an up-to-date set of man pages with the LILO source
distribution. "make install" will install the new pages. Just check your
manpath to make sure you are looking at the new pages.

--John



On Mon, 14 Feb 2005 00:06:34 -0800, Howard Chu <XYZ.hyc@highlandsun.com>
wrote:

>Nico Kadel-Garcia wrote:
>> "Howard Chu" <XYZ.hyc@highlandsun.com> wrote in message
>> news:f7-dnSdua8tQk43fRVn-2g@comcast.com...
>>
>>>I've been trying to get a new AMD64 system set up and booted, with no luck
>>>so far. Installing SuSE 9.2 on an Asus A8V. There are 4 SATA drives on the
>>>system, two on the Promise PDC20378 in RAID0 mode, and two on the onboard
>>>VIA 6420/8237. I have Windows XP Pro SP1 installed on the PDC, and I've
>>>formatted the other two SATA drives as Dynamic Disks, so that I can setup
>>>striping on them in both Windows and Linux.
>>>
>>>SATA drive sdc has 3 interesting partitions - 512MB for Linux swap,
>>>32MB ext2fs for /boot, and 5GB for Linux software raid root.
>
>> SuSE is not your friend for weird setups, and Promise is not your friend for
>> *ANYTHING*.
>
>I'm beginning to see that...
>
>The lilo that SuSE bundles is 22.3.4. I downloaded the source for 22.6.1
>on another system and built that, which works a bit better. lilo
>actually loads off the hard drive now and gives the boot menu. It loads
>the kernel but setting up the root partition (which is raid0 on
>/dev/md0) fails. At least it's better than the undocumented 'L 99 99 99...'
>
>...
>
>OK, I played around some more and used the Rescue boot to tweak the
>default initrd. Since the kernel wasn't automatically detecting my raid0
>root partition, I edited the linuxrc in the initrd and stuck an explicit
>"mdadm -A /dev/md0 /dev/sdc3 /dev/sdd2" in there. Finally the system is
>booting all the way up.
>
>>>drive sdd has 2 partitions - 512MB for Linux swap, and 5GB for Linux
>>>software raid root.
>>>
>>>After a lot of googling I found that grub doesn't support LDM, but lilo is
>>>supposed to. The SuSE installer has no trouble copying all the packages
>>>onto the 10GB /dev/md0. But I can't get this thing to boot at all.
>>>
>>>When I try to run lilo with boot=/dev/sdc and boot this drive, I get
>>>L 99 99 99 99 99 <screenful of 99s> and nothing else.

Nico Kadel-Garcia wrote:
> "Howard Chu" <XYZ.hyc@highlandsun.com> wrote in message
> news:ZKudnRDph9UJxo3fRVn-3Q@comcast.com...
>
>>Nico Kadel-Garcia wrote:
>>
>>>"Howard Chu" <XYZ.hyc@highlandsun.com> wrote in message
>>>news:f7-dnSdua8tQk43fRVn-2g@comcast.com...
>>>
>>>
>>>>I've been trying to get a new AMD64 system set up and booted, with no
>>>>luck so far. Installing SuSE 9.2 on an Asus A8V. There are 4 SATA drives
>>>>on the system, two on the Promise PDC20378 in RAID0 mode, and two on the
>>>>onboard VIA 6420/8237. I have Windows XP Pro SP1 installed on the PDC,
>>>>and I've formatted the other two SATA drives as Dynamic Disks, so that I
>>>>can setup striping on them in both Windows and Linux.
>>>>
>>>>SATA drive sdc has 3 interesting partitions - 512MB for Linux swap,
>>>>32MB ext2fs for /boot, and 5GB for Linux software raid root.
>>
>>>SuSE is not your friend for weird setups, and Promise is not your friend
>>>for *ANYTHING*.
>>
>>I'm beginning to see that...
>>
>>The lilo that SuSE bundles is 22.3.4. I downloaded the source for 22.6.1
>>on another system and built that, which works a bit better. lilo actually
>>loads off the hard drive now and gives the boot menu. It loads the kernel
>>but setting up the root partition (which is raid0 on /dev/md0) fails. At
>>least it's better than the undocumented 'L 99 99 99...'
>>
>>...
>>
>>OK, I played around some more and used the Rescue boot to tweak the
>>default initrd. Since the kernel wasn't automatically detecting my raid0
>>root partition, I edited the linuxrc in the initrd and stuck an explicit
>>"mdadm -A /dev/md0 /dev/sdc3 /dev/sdd2" in there. Finally the system is
>>booting all the way up.
>
>
> Great! And thanks for posting your working solution.
>
> By the way, software RAID is not your friend either. You may have noticed
> that.....

Indeed, this has been the most painful install I've ever done...

There was one more problem, I had installed lilo into the MBR of
/dev/sdc, which seems to have corrupted the Dynamic Disk tag so Windows
wouldn't touch the disks any more. Nothing in the Windows disk utils
would reset the partition tables so I booted back into Linux and used
fdisk to wipe the disk labels and recreate the partition tables. Then
back into Windows again to convert from Basic disk to Dynamic disk...
Fortunately none of these steps damaged the contents of the partitions.

So I changed lilo to use the partition boot sector of my /boot
partition, and now I have to use the Windows boot loader to get Linux
going...

So, the final summary of how it all works:

Set Promise controller in RAID0 mode, install Windows XP with Promise
raid driver on floppy on that "disk." (Linux sees these as /dev/sda and
/dev/sdb, but obviously must not use them. Instead, use dmraid to access
them.)

Use any partitioning tool to set up the other two SATA disks. I
partitioned them in Basic Disk mode, then converted to Dynamic Disk
(LDM), and then ran diskpart to "retain" the old-style partitions. I'm
not sure this was necessary, since Linux 2.6 does support LDM, I just
did it anyway.

/dev/sdc1, /dev/sdd1 = 512MB swap spaces
/dev/sdc2 = 32MB ext2 /boot
/dev/sdc3, /dev/sdd2 = 5GB parts for striped /dev/md0 mounted as root

lilo 22.6.1 installed in /dev/sdc2 boot sector.
copied the boot sector to a Windows file linux.bin so I could reference
it from the Windows bootloader (add 'C:\linux.bin="Linux"' to the end of
C:\boot.ini)

In /etc/lilo.conf I had to explicitly assign
disk=/dev/sdc
bios=0x81
Otherwise it's looking at the wrong disk at boot time. (Linux sees
/dev/sda and /dev/sdb as separate devices, assumes they are BIOS 0x80
and 0x81, so sdc would be 0x82. But BIOS sees only /dev/sda due to the
RAID setup, so /dev/sdc is 0x81.)

After that I carved up the rest of the space on sdc and sdd into a
striped reiser partition under Linux and a striped NTFS partition for
Windows, and finally it's setup the way I wanted.

--
-- Howard Chu
Chief Architect, Symas Corp. Director, Highland Sun
http://www.symas.com http://highlandsun.com/hyc
Symas: Premier OpenSource Development and Support

"Nico Kadel-Garcia" <nkadel@comcast.net> writes:

[...]

>By the way, software RAID is not your friend either. You may have noticed
>that.....

Well, there's nothing wrong with software-RAID per se. Alas, you should
- know what you're doing;
- have a backup prepared;
- not try to share disks on SW-RAID amongst different OSes and
- NEVER use RAID0 on IDE disks. At the very least, use 1+0,
otherwise it's a catastrophy waiting to happen.

Michael

--
Michael Buchenrieder * mibu@scrum.greenie.muc.de * http://www.muc.de/~mibu
Lumber Cartel Unit #456 (TINLC) & Official Netscum
Note: If you want me to send you email, don't munge your address.

"Michael Buchenrieder" <mibu@scrum.muc.de> wrote in message
news:IByKsK.DK2@scrum.muc.de...
> "Nico Kadel-Garcia" <nkadel@comcast.net> writes:
>
> [...]
>
>>By the way, software RAID is not your friend either. You may have noticed
>>that.....
>
> Well, there's nothing wrong with software-RAID per se. Alas, you should
> - know what you're doing;
> - have a backup prepared;
> - not try to share disks on SW-RAID amongst different OSes and
> - NEVER use RAID0 on IDE disks. At the very least, use 1+0,
> otherwise it's a catastrophy waiting to happen.
>
> Michael

Never put your bare bones OS on software RAID, because when it gets screwed
up for whatever reason, it can be exceptionally difficult to repair. SuSE is
especailly bad for this, since their "rescue" setups seem to lack most of
the important drivers and tools that the "installation" setups provide form
the same installation media.

JohnInSD At san DOT rr dot COM wrote:
> SuSE is known to have distributed broken versions of LILO in the past. 22.3
> is pretty out-of-date. Glad to hear you downloaded 22.6.1, the current
> release. It compiles in and supports the 64-bit environment.
>
> The LILO 99 error code is documented in the man page for "lilo". You should
> have received an up-to-date set of man pages with the LILO source
> distribution. "make install" will install the new pages. Just check your
> manpath to make sure you are looking at the new pages.

Thanks, looking at the right manpages certainly helps. And now another
handy thing I found in the current lilo... A lot of the HOWTOs on the
web that describe multibooting Linux with the Windows bootloader tell
you to grab the bootsector that lilo generates and copy it to the
Windows root directory, then point to it in BOOT.INI. Of course, since
the bootsector contains maps for the 2nd stage etc., you have to recopy
it every time you make a change that requires rerunning lilo.

But if your Linux boot is on its own disk, current lilo (since about
version 22.5 I guess) provides an easier way - set the bootsector to go
into the root sector of the boot partition, and use lilo -M to generate
an MBR bootsector to load that. Copy this MBR bootsector to Windows and
then you never have to update it ever again.

E.g., on my setup I now have in /etc/lilo.conf
boot=/dev/sdc2

so I run
lilo -M /dev/sdc
dd if=/dev/sdc of=linux.bin bs=512 count=1

and copy that linux.bin to Windows. Since /dev/sdc is a dynamic disk, I
restore the original MBR on it so that Windows doesn't complain. I use
lilo -A to make sure that /dev/sdc2 is the active partition, and
everything is hunky dory.

The next question, as a feature request, would be to have an option to
force the MBR to boot a specific partition, regardless of its activation
status. That way you can manually set up multiple MBRs to boot multiple
partitions, if you have more than one on the same disk.

--
-- Howard Chu
Chief Architect, Symas Corp. Director, Highland Sun
http://www.symas.com http://highlandsun.com/hyc
Symas: Premier OpenSource Development and Support

For future reference I've posted a more detailed writeup here:
http://highlandsun.com/hyc/linuxboot.html

> Thanks, looking at the right manpages certainly helps. And now another
> handy thing I found in the current lilo... A lot of the HOWTOs on the
> web that describe multibooting Linux with the Windows bootloader tell
> you to grab the bootsector that lilo generates and copy it to the
> Windows root directory, then point to it in BOOT.INI. Of course, since
> the bootsector contains maps for the 2nd stage etc., you have to recopy
> it every time you make a change that requires rerunning lilo.
>
> But if your Linux boot is on its own disk, current lilo (since about
> version 22.5 I guess) provides an easier way - set the bootsector to go
> into the root sector of the boot partition, and use lilo -M to generate
> an MBR bootsector to load that. Copy this MBR bootsector to Windows and
> then you never have to update it ever again.


--
-- Howard Chu
Chief Architect, Symas Corp. Director, Highland Sun
http://www.symas.com http://highlandsun.com/hyc
Symas: Premier OpenSource Development and Support