According to this line right here, you are placing this boot record at boot = /dev/hda2. That's OK, when you boot on /dev/hda2, you'll see the menu generated by LILO. But I assume that what you want to do is put LILO on the Master Boot Record (MBR), is that right? If so, change
boot=/dev/hda2 to
boot=/dev/hda and that ought to change the result.

Be sure to rerun LILO to get the change to take effect.

Thanks MasterC and Masinick...

I will try that when I get back to working on my slack box tonight...

Cool

A common misconception about Debian is that it is hard to use because so many people have trouble getting past the installer, at least in the base Debian version. The Debian project has another project underway to greatly simplify installation. But you can get around that problem by using an easy to install commercial version of Debian GNU/Linux software, such as Libranet, LindowsOS, or Xandros. Of these three, I personally like Libranet best, but each has their place. Libranet is a very complete system in itself, with a text and menu based installer, but it works beautifully. LindowsOS installs in less than ten minutes on most systems, but you end up having to download quite a bit of software to turn it into a really complete system, so you need a broadband link to use it effectively. Xandros is a really stable piece of software, and it makes a great starting point for people used to using Windows and those who are more interested in stability than in the lastest features.

Once installed, any of these distributions can get you to the same place because they are are backed by the Debian .deb packages and the packaging systems, apt-get, dselect, and the graphical synaptic updating application.

So my advice to anyone wanting to get into Debian software that's intimidated by the raw Debian installer is to try out one of these three distributions instead. For me, I like Libranet best of all.

Regarding Slackware, it is probably the most UNIX-like in character, packaging, and directory layout of any GNU/Linux distribution. Slackware uses pkgtool, an installation packaging tool very similar to Sun Solaris' packaging tool by the same name.

Slackware is best for those who will end up building their own software from compressed tar files, and that is precisely what Slackware packages are built from. Slackware is not always leading edge unless you download the CURRENT package at any given time, but Slackware is known for stability, just as Debian is.

I'd recommend either a Debian distribution or a Slackware distribution for anyone who wants to go beyond just creating a system with an automatic installer and a fancy GUI. If you really want to learn, both Debian and Slackware make great places to learn. Personally, I'd give Debian the nod and I'd give Libranet the nod as the best starting point.

trying different versions of linux should also be seen as an exercise.

I don't walk or run enough, but I typically have eight Linux distributions on my system at any given time.

ok, um, then you need therapy.

: )

Definitely!

for your fstab problemo, id suggest instead of putting 'vfat' put in 'auto' it may be mounting an incorrect fs, you may know for sure its a fat32 but let fstab do the work for you.

Now something strange just happened... I booted into Slackware with the boot disk to make the change to lilo.config you suggested... only when I logged in as root I got errors

bash:id: id command can not be found
bash:fortune: fortune command can not be found

I tried to enter pico... can't be found. It is like I was logged in as root without any access to the config tools. I checked a couple folders like ls /usr and others and they were empty.

So I rebooted into WindowsME and my fat32 d:\ can't be found now. I then rebooted to the Slackware CD and ran cfdisk and I get fatal error partition 4 ends before sector 0.

Any ideas about what might have happened and how can I recover my d:\ drive?

I just solved the problem in my last post... used a tool called MBR Works to clear my partiion table except for hda1 then went back to cfdisk and recreated the rest of the partitions. After a reboot back into WinME... I had my d:\ back.

Cool

Well that solved that problem for a couple days... now it is corrupted again.

How can I prevent this?

It is not cool losing the partition table every couple days.

Oh I set this hard drive up from scratch... setup a 6GB partition with a Windows ME boot disk then installed WinME and associated software.

c:\ 6GB WinME

Then I loaded Slackware 8.1 and created the following partitions using cfdisk...

/root 5GB
swap 128MB
/tmp 1GB
/usr 4GB
/var 3GB
/home 10 GB
/mydata 50GB

I must be doing something wrong to keep losing the partition table.

I don't know for sure if this is the problem with your partition table,

but, I have always read that reiserfs should have "0 0" at the end of the fstab line. If I understand it correctly, you don't want fsck to be messing with your reiserfs data...

just my $.02

The last time this happened... I went into cfdisk and it complained about partition 4 being written out side of allocated space. I then went to fdisk and deleted partition 3 - 6... then I went back into cfdisk and recreated them the way they are supposed to be then reloaded fdisk and a did a write from fdisk. That appears to have fixed the problem. There hasn't been any other corrupt partitions since I wrote out the partition table with fdisk.

That info about 0 0 at the end of reiserfs parts in the fstab... do you have a link for where that would be.

Yeah,

I read it in the instructions for LFS: http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/view...r08/fstab.html

It doesn't say on that page why to put "0 0", but I do remember reading it. Just do a google search for "reiserfs fstab", I'll bet you can find it.

HTH

Well I haven't booted into Slackware on this pc since the last time I fixed the partition table... been working on my server.

Now tonight as soon as booted my computer no D:\ drive... partition table has corrupted again.

Any ideas why?