Author: Stephen Nelson-Smith Date: To: Hampshire LUG Discussion List Subject: Re: [Hampshire] Slackware rootdisk (was: Removing master boot records)
Hello,
On Wed, Jun 11, 2008 at 6:13 PM, Rob Malpass <lug@???> wrote:
> I've got it to boot from the hard drive - but a few seconds into the boot
> process, it's now asking for a rootdisk - which I've obviously not created,
> nor do I really want to create one - I want it to stick to the hdd
> completely - no cds, no floppies etc.
Do we infer from this that you've installed slackware?
> To be honest, I ran the dd command suggested
>
> dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hda bs=512 count=4
>
> not really knowing what it did.
Ok - MBR101 follows:
The MBR (master boot record) is the first 512 bytes of your disk - the
first sector. It contains the partition tables, and optionally some
executable code that the bios runs when the computer boots. In the
slackware install there's an option to install lilo to the MBR - I
think it even says (possibly unsafe) from memory.
The executable code is contained within the first 446 bytes. The
partition table follows, 6 bytes later, and is 64 bytes in size. Then
there are 2 extra bytes of data. That makes up your 512 bytes.
You erased the partition table and the executable code by over-writing
it with zeros.
> Am I right in thinking the initial output
> is from lilo
Which output - it would help if you gave the exact things you see.
> and lilo now needs to know where the partition is?
I'm not clear on what you're experiencing, or even if you're still at
the install stage. Older slackware installs spoke of root and boot
disks, so you may even be seeing installation messages. You've not
provided enough context.
> If so, can
> someone tell me what the dd syntax is to point it at /dev/hda1?
