Boot to HDD with CD

Forum: HD Install
Topic: Boot to HDD with CD
started by: cyberoidx

Posted by cyberoidx on Jan. 19 2006,15:47

I installed linux to hdd3
Its been disabled in the BIOs (purposely) but is WIn partition (hdd1) IS detected in Win98 and all hdd(1-3) are detected when running DSL from CD.

So i installed to hdd3.. and didn't want to install a bootloader..
How do i use a boot cd (i got DSl / knoppix / slackware etc boot cds) to get it up and running whenever i want?

tried cheat codes like root=/dev/hdd3 (never worked) and fromhd=/dev/hdd3 (neither did this)

Posted by skaos on Jan. 19 2006,15:59

Did you try "linux root=/dev/hdd3 ro" or "dsl root=/dev/hdd3 ro"?

Posted by cyberoidx on Jan. 20 2006,01:56

Yeah, linux is not recognised as an image, and when i try dsl root=/dev/hdd3 it loads some init's and then cant find the kernel, so drops to a limited shell.

Posted by skaos on Jan. 20 2006,10:34

Are you sure that it is /dev/hdd, i.e. secondary slave? If you're not sure, you could boot the live CD and run "fdisk -l" as root.

Posted by cyberoidx on Jan. 20 2006,14:00

YES.
I've done numerous installs on it... (GENTOO kicked my @$$)

BTW, for some reason, The HDD installer doesn't install the Bootloader ... I tried installing obth lilo and GRUB...

Posted by cbagger01 on Jan. 22 2006,15:54

What kind of hard drive install?

With a frugal install, the root is your initial ramdisk so "root=/dev/hdX" does not apply.

Posted by cyberoidx on Jan. 23 2006,00:39

Not frugal, normal install.

Why on earth does it not install a bootloader (ALL other distro's dont have nay problem)

Why on earth does it always load root as read-only. I cant edit lilo.conf .. This would have saved most of my problem

Posted by cbagger01 on Jan. 23 2006,04:38

I do not perform a full hd install, so I may not be the best guy to give you advice but I'll try anyway.

If you boot from the livecd, the root filesystem is a ramdisk and not your hard drive partition.

You can access it as user root by typing:

sudo su

However, much of the filesystem is symlinks back to the /KNOPPIX compressed image (a read-only filesystem on the CD disk), so it is read-only.

You can either copy the lilo.conf over to a writable directory like /home/dsl/ and edit it, OR

you can try and find the file that should be sitting on your hard drive by mounting it and looking around, ie:

mount /mnt/hda1
cd /mnt/hda1/boot/
ls

etc...

or you can use the Midnight Commander file manger if you prefer:

mc

If you need to install a bootloader, you can run the mkliloboot script, if I remember the name correctly.

Once you are done editing the file, you will need to activate your changes by running the "lilo" command.

Posted by cyberoidx on Jan. 24 2006,15:44

I gave up. Its a lot of hardwork.