Cannot dual boot win 98 and Suse Linux

[infojunkie]

I am a Linux newbie and had just installed Suse 8.0 Professional today. I have 2 disks: C has 8 gig and D has 60 gig. Win 98 is installed on C. On D drive there is a 5 gig Dos partition for Win 98 and the rest of the disk - a 55 gig partition is for Linux. During the install, I loaded LILO and set for it to boot MRB on /dev/hdb (D drive). It did not work, it boot Win 98 instead. I tried setting it to boot MRB on /dev/hba (C Drive). It hung during boot time and displayed 'LI' on the screen. I tried to make a boot floppy to boot in Yast2, but it kept giving me errors (I tried on two different floppy disks).
I read the Suse documentation and it said I can install loadlin in Win 98 by running setup from CD1. Well, I cannot find setup on CD1. Can someone please give me some pointers? Thanks in advance.

[mdwatts]

If you install Linux on hdb, then you will need to install the Linux bootloader (Lilo or Grub) in the mbr of hda.

Can you boot Linux at all so you can edit /etc/lilo.conf and change it from hdb to hda?

If you cannot get into Linux at all, then you may need to reinstall and this time pay special attention to where the bootloader is installed.

[k4ml]

Hey ....your's look similar with me ...!:p I've just also migrating to SuSE 8.0 just for try ....I use Redhat and Mandrake before this. I think your first mistake is to install Lilo on the /dev/hdb that is your MBR of second disk. You should install Lilo on the MBR of first hard disk (/dev/hda). However it's to late now. Maybe you could try booting with CD (CD1) and choose the rescue options. Your system then will be mount under /mnt directory (this is in Redhat & Mandrake ..I don't try on SuSE). Then you have the chance to modify your lilo.conf file. Just make sure that the option boot is set to /dev/hda
boot = /dev/hda.
You can e-mail me at k4ml@linuxmail.org if you need any help. i'll try as i coould.

[infojunkie]

Thanks for the info. I'll edit the lilo.conf and let y'all know the result.

Infojunkie

[Cloasters]

I don't think that you will endanger your Win 98 installation if you tell LILO or GRUB to install itself into the MBR of your Primary Master HDD, /dev/hda1, C:\ drive. With Win 9x, it's best to install the MS OS first, followed by Linux.

If you have to reinstall SuSE 8.0, boot from a Win 98 boot or rescue floppy. Then run "fdisk /mbr" from the A:\ prompt.
This removes all Linux related data from your C:\ drive's Master Boot Record. Who needs the confusion that an old and now unneeded LILO or GRUB file can cause?

Modern SuSE's insist upon a FAT 32 volume/drive/partition before they'll install. Dunno if this is true in 8.0, but SuSE 8.1 wants the whole dang HDD to be one huge FAT 32 partition. This is what the directions say-- all the same, 8.1 was happy to peacefully co-exist with a pre-existing 98SE installation. But it created too much space for Win and not enough for itself. So I removed MS.

If you have to install SuSE 8.0 from the very beginning again, your /dev/hdb drive is now a problem. Win 9x's fdisk utility can't even see the three new partitions that SuSE created on the non-DOS partitions of the drive. Or, it will say that it can---but Win's fdisk will not work properly on the /dev/hdb2, 3 and 4 partitions.

I have an old Mandrake 5.3 installation CD-ROM that makes using Linux's fdisk easy. Linux's fdisk will handle many file systems from many OS's. It will delete the ext2/3/Reiser FS partitions easily, then it will create Fat 32(Type "c") partitions to your liking. Except that it may be able to only handle a fraction of modern large HDD's.

No worries, now Win 9x's fdisk can see and handle the FAT 32 partitions and make the drive full sized again. Just in case you didn't know, using fdisk on a drive murderizes all the present data that's on it. However, you may get lucky and preserve that /dev/hdb1 partition!

[infojunkie]

I suspect my problem is related to the location of /boot, which is located beyond the 1024 cyclinder (Found this in SusE reference manual). I am going to get rid of MRB from drive C and re-install Linux. I plan to remove the DOS partition on the 2nd HDD so Linux will take up the entire 60Gig. Then the MBR will be located within the 1024 cylinder.

Infojunkie

[infojunkie]

I did it! I booted Suse from the CD and reinstalled it. During the configuration, I partitioned a 50MB /boot partition on my C drive (shared with win 98). The /boot partition is within the 1024 cylinder limit. Then I set MBR to /dev/hda and now when I boot the PC, LILO's menu came up and asked me to choose to boot Linux or windows.

Infojunkie

[mdwatts]

Way to go.... A job well done.

[Penrich]

Originally posted by Cloasters
Modern SuSE's insist upon a FAT 32 volume/drive/partition before they'll install. Dunno if this is true in 8.0, but SuSE 8.1 wants the whole dang HDD to be one huge FAT 32 partition. This is what the directions say-- all the same, 8.1 was happy to peacefully co-exist with a pre-existing 98SE installation. But it created too much space for Win and not enough for itself. So I removed MS.

8.0 doesn't need FAT. Default filesystem is reifers, and my disc had had a clean format before install.

And well done infojunkie for getting there!