kidstar64 Posted March 13, 2009 Share Posted March 13, 2009 Ok so I have CF to IDE adapter and a Kingmax 4GB CF card. When I try to install Ubuntu on it or any OS Distro, it wont boot. So something is obviously wrong with either the MBR of the boot config files. Can someone tell me how to make the CF bootable? It will install through the LiveCD but on boot does nothing on boot. I know Hak.5 had aired a Smoothwall episode and used a CF to IDE adapter. Just wondering if they had any problems with the install? I am using a Intel DG845 something but I don't think the MOBO matters. Any help is appreciated! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
digip Posted March 13, 2009 Share Posted March 13, 2009 Ok so I have CF to IDE adapter and a Kingmax 4GB CF card. When I try to install Ubuntu on it or any OS Distro, it wont boot. So something is obviously wrong with either the MBR of the boot config files. Can someone tell me how to make the CF bootable? It will install through the LiveCD but on boot does nothing on boot. I know Hak.5 had aired a Smoothwall episode and used a CF to IDE adapter. Just wondering if they had any problems with the install? I am using a Intel DG845 something but I don't think the MOBO matters. Any help is appreciated! When you installed it, did you make the partition on the card active and bootble? Or maybe the BIOS can't recognize it. How did you install it? Also, if the system recognizes it as a removable disk, you might have to change to boot order in the bios to recognize it. If it does reconize it as a fixed disk, then maybe you don't have somehting set up properly. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
VaKo Posted March 13, 2009 Share Posted March 13, 2009 Try PFsense Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kidstar64 Posted March 13, 2009 Author Share Posted March 13, 2009 When you installed it, did you make the partition on the card active and bootble? Or maybe the BIOS can't recognize it. How did you install it? Also, if the system recognizes it as a removable disk, you might have to change to boot order in the bios to recognize it. If it does reconize it as a fixed disk, then maybe you don't have somehting set up properly. I used Gparted to make it bootable. It shows up as a HD in the bios and the boot order is correct. Is their a fixmbr command equivalent in linux? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
digip Posted March 13, 2009 Share Posted March 13, 2009 I used Gparted to make it bootable. It shows up as a HD in the bios and the boot order is correct. Is their a fixmbr command equivalent in linux? What are you using to boot the kernel? Lilo, Grub, SysLinux? Do you get a linux boot screen at all, or just a blank screen after the BIOS post? Also, what method did you use to isntall it? A GUI, or manual self install. You might want to boot via live cd or USB and then examing the drives settings, like /etc/fstab for the correct drive settings and if say you use lilo, then edit /etc/lilo.conf to be sure its set up properly, then run the lilo command when done to make sure its set properly "lili -v" will giv eyou verbose output and show what the boot setup is doing or looking for. A little more info, like what happens after the bios screen, do you see anything, do you get a boot menu, can you fromt he main screen fit a F-key to select the boot device, and do you see the CF card as an option(Not in th ebios, but during the bios post, is there an option like ESC or F10 for a picking the boot menu). If everythign was installed correctly, the sounds like you just need to fix something like lilo, syslinux or grub on there to boot the install. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kidstar64 Posted March 13, 2009 Author Share Posted March 13, 2009 Its a livecd install. So edition the lilo command will make a new boot cfg? and i do this after install right? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
digip Posted March 13, 2009 Share Posted March 13, 2009 Its a livecd install. So edition the lilo command will make a new boot cfg? and i do this after install right? well, I'm not surehow you installed it, but you can at least look at fstab and lilo,conf to see if they have the right info in them. Boot a live disc, mount the HDD and then look at the files on the HDD, not the cd. So its probably somehting like /mnt/hdax/etc/fstab where x is the disk id. You can also issue "fdisk /dev/hda" and then "p" to print the partitions ont he disk and see what it says. Depending on how you partitioned the drive the first one should be somehting like /dev/hda1 with an * for the boot flag on that drive. If it doesn't have that, then you should just start over. Im not a linux expert, but depdnign on the distro, there are several ways to do an install from a live disc. The easiest is start with fdisk, partition your disks, make the one bootable, then make you file systems on each drive, like mke2fs, mkreiserfs, etc, then copy over the files, edit fstab and lilo.conf and then run lilo. I thought uBuntu had a GUI installer that did all the work for you though, so maybe look into that as well. Im getting ready to rebuild an old desktop machine tonight and Im gonna try to install the latest uBuntu on it myself just to refresh my memory edit: Just did a HDD install using the install option from the menu, and everything is working fine. I used the GUI installer, set up my own options for the partition, sda1 /boot, sda2 swap, sda3 /, and then let it do the rest. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kidstar64 Posted March 14, 2009 Author Share Posted March 14, 2009 Ill rebuild my test rig and try it out on saturday. Thanks for the info. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kidstar64 Posted March 14, 2009 Author Share Posted March 14, 2009 Ok, after doing a fresh install of Ubuntu 8.10 and rebooting, I cannot boot into Ubuntu. It doesn't even go into the grub boot loader. Can i put a diffrent boot loader on? Or repair the existion grub bootloader? The fstab on the CF looks fine but i cannot find the lilo.conf in the /etc/ dir on the CF.... This thing is drivingme crazy. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
digip Posted March 15, 2009 Share Posted March 15, 2009 lilo and grub are two seperate boot loaders. When you install uBuntu, are you using the GUI setup? From the uBuntu live disc menu, I just chose, install, and then when it came up for setup, I chose a custom partitioon layout, /boot set to /dev/hda1 with 128meg and ext2fs, swap for /dev/hda2 with 1024meg and / for the rest on /dev/hda3 with the reiserfs. I then just answered the questions, and it did the rest. Removed the CD, rebooted and everything was good to go. What are the steps you take to install it? Can you write a walkthrough of what you are doing? What does fdisk say about the device? Like, fdisk /dev/hda where hda is the CF card. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kidstar64 Posted March 15, 2009 Author Share Posted March 15, 2009 Ok so my cdrom is on the fritz, ill pick one up on mondy from work. But in the meantime i guess i will part with my usb drive and use it. So im using just the regular GUI install. First i tried without chaing the partition setings. Just used the default settings. Also, i reinstalled the grub boot loader on the Cf card from the livecd. The fdisk readout says its marked as bootable. The fstab.conf looks normal. I am going to try and partition it so that their is no swap partition. I read somewhere that the swap could be the problem. Damn CF card, why cannot it be simple? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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