lilo: "not the first disk"

[Harvey Fishman]

On Tue, 8 Sep 1998, Jim Thompson wrote:

> >>>>> "Harvey" == Harvey Fishman <fishman at panix.com> writes:
> 
>     Harvey> On Tue, 8 Sep 1998, Jim Thompson wrote:
> 
>     >> >> Finally after the installation, I had the problem to make lilo
>     >> >> use the MBR of the /dev/sda, it kept telling "not the first >>
>     >> disk",
> 
>     Harvey> This is not a LILO problem at all, but a planar BIOS one.
> 
> Thanks for the explanation, but I don't think you understand the
> problem.  It's not a problem booting, but a problem using lilo to
> install the boot record.  My system will boot off the SCSI disk just
> fine, even with the IDE drive present.  The BIOS can be told whether to
> boot SCSI-first or IDE-first in a mixed system.
> 
> The problem occurs in running lilo to write the boot record to the SCSI
> drive.  If the IDE disk is enabled, lilo will report "/dev/sda not the
> first disk" when in fact it is.  A workaround, but an inconvenient one,
> is to disable or unplug the IDE disk, then boot into linux.  With the
> IDE drive/controller disabled, lilo will install the boot record without
> complaint.  The IDE drive can then be reenabled, and linux will still
> boot off the SCSI system just fine.
> 
> Lilo seems to assume that if an IDE drive is present, then it *must* be
> the boot drive.

LILO puts the boot record in the place pointed to by the line that you
(should) have in /etc/lilo.conf that says "boot = /dev/sda".  It depends
upon external software (i.e. the planar BIOS) to transfer control to the
boot record of that physical or logical drive at startup.  For you it will
be a physical drive.  For me, it is a logical drive (/dev/sdb1) as I use
OS/2 Boot Manager as my primary director and LILO as the secondary.  Don't
sweat that message; it is correct, but it is meaningless.  The SCSI drive
is NOT the first disk in the drive table of the planar BIOS, but so what?
The LILO stuff goes to the SCSI drive and your planar BIOS will transfer
control there and everything will work.

I have been getting the message "Warning: /dev/sdb1 is not on the first
disk." for the last three and a half years since I started using Linux
because Linux is on my second SCSI drive.  I very recently added a
___LARGE___ ATA drive to act a a CD-ROM cache under NT, which is my primary
O/S.  All my data disks for both NT and Linux are SCSI.  I had not
installed a new version of Linux since I had added the ATA drive, so I just
built 2.1.120 and tried the installation.  I got that same message as
always, but everything works fine.  Don't worry about the message; it is
right but you are misinterpreting it as a problem while it is only an
informational thingie.

Harvey

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
 Harvey Fishman   |
fishman at panix.com |           A little heresy is good for the soul.
  718-258-7276    |


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