[GRLUG] Active Partitions

[Justin Denick]

On Dec 5, 2007 10:17 AM, Tim Schmidt <timschmidt at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Dec 5, 2007 9:44 AM, Justin Denick <justin.denick at gmail.com> wrote:
> > No, the machine will not boot, regardless of where the bootloader is
> > installed, if
> > there isn't an active partition. Thus, far this is the only board I
> > have seen exhibit
> > this behavior. And it isn't Intel specific, as my older Intel board
> > will boot w/o an
> > active partition.
>
> Hrmm...  Shouldn't be the board's problem at that point.  If the
> bootloader (in this case, LILO's first stage loader) is installed in
> the MBR, it's executed first thing after POST, and control of the
> system is then it it's hands alone.  The BIOS no longer has an active
> role in the boot process past this point.  So either your version of
> LILO requires an active partition, is misconfigured, improperly
> installed, or has a bug.
>
> see: http://axiom.anu.edu.au/~okeefe/p2b/power2bash/power2bash.html
Thanks Tim, I thought the same thing too. But LILO (appears) to have
not been called. LILO has a sort of
debugger, that lets you know how far it got, if it was called at all.
Since I see the "No Operating System
Found / Invalid System Disk " sort of message, I concluded that the
bootloader was never executed.

Upon even further investigation I have found that LILO, requires an
active partition.
I feel pretty dumb now, and I will no longer taunt GRUB, though I am
confused as to why the requisite does not follow
all of my machines.

Here's the link if you wish to read it.

http://en.opensuse.org/SDB%3ALILO_fails%3A_Error_messages_and_their_interpretation

>
>
> --tim
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