Linux Installation and Firewire [Archive]

Green Bottle 2

22nd Jun 2004, 05:48

I am trying to install Redhat Linux 8.0 on my laptop alongside a windows XP installation. I have partioned the harddrive and apparently installed Linux into the partition but when I boot up using the Linux boot disk that I created, it appears to work OK starting up untill it gets to the IE1394 bit and then it hangs. I have tried booting several times but to no avail.

On a slightly different note I could not get bootmagic to start the Linux installation. My Linux partitiion are in an extended portion of my hard drive, win XP on an NTFS partition and a fat32 partition for bootmagic (setup by BM itself).

I have limited experience of installing and using Linux, running a dual boot on a desktop with Win 98 using a LILO bootloader. I had no problems installing that but I started from scratch with that system.

Any help would be much appreciated.

GB2:confused:

Mac the Knife

23rd Jun 2004, 19:20

Sorry if this isn't very helpful, but [email protected] is difficult.

Starting with Bootmagic, I don't use it, but are you sure that it is pointing to the right partition? What parameters are you giving it (and where exactly is your Linux partition). Linux should have no problems booting from an extended partition.

Have a look at this page from MozillaQuest http://www.mozillaquest.com/stories_01/PQMagicWarning-01/pm-warning_01_Story-01-1.html

"In our January 1, 2001 article, Dual-Boot Linux & Windows to Get the Best of Both Operating System Worlds, we recommended using PartitionMagic and BootMagic from PowerQuest for partition and boot management in a Linux-Windows dual-boot system. Unfortunately however, we now must withdraw that recommendation. Here is why.

Partition Magic 6.0 was used to do some additional partition re-sizing, moving, and creating operations to the system described in the Dual-Boot article -- subsequent to publication of that article.

Prior to these subsequent partition management operations, both the Linux and Windows boots worked fine. However, after these additional partition management operations, the Linux boot no longer worked. That strongly suggests that the partition management operations did something that messed up the Linux boot.

The PartitionMagic people have been notified of this problem. However, so far they have not explained satisfactorily what happened or how to fix it -- or why they have not been able to explain what happened or how to fix it. Therefore, we withdraw our recommendation to use PartitionMagic and BootMagic"

Don't know if this still applies, but why not use LILO or GRUB ?

You can restore the MBR to the XP default

"Under Windows XP, you can restore the original MBR (thus uninstalling Lilo) as follows:

Boot from the Windows XP CD, press the key "R" in the setup in order to start the restoration console. Select your Windows XP installation from the list, and enter the administrator password. Enter the command "FIXMBR" at the input prompt and confirm the next question with "y". Finally, use "exit" to restore the computer."

If you do this, you won't be able to start your Linux install (except from the LILO bootdisk) - you can then go into tthe Manager (don't know what RedHat uses (I'm a SuSE chap) and configure the boot manager again.

As for the IE1394 bit, if Linux can't find the driver it still shouldn't hang - it'll just give up after a timeout and carry on. Maybe this problem is related to the first. Have you thought about doing a reinstall? It doesn't sound as though you have anything much to lose yet.