Linux not booting on Gateway E-4000 / Intel 865GLC Motherboard?

[bscott at ntisys.com]

On Wed, 28 Jan 2004, at 10:37am, Brad.Portelance at state.vt.us wrote:
> Has anyone every had an experience w/the above System / Motherboard
> freezing at the BIOS Screen only when there's Linux partitions on the Hard
> Drive? If there's any other partition or none at all, then the system
> makes it past the BIOS screen with no problem.

  No experience like that, no, sorry.  I have seen similar weird things,
though.

  Some suggestions, in addition to the other suggestions that have been made
here:

  Try installing a Microsoft MBR.  All you care about is the bootstrap in
the MBR; the partition table itself can be edited later in Linux.  Then
install your Linux system.  Make your boot/root partition a primary
partition, and flag it as "Active".  When it comes time to install the boot
loader (GRUB or LILO), write it into the PBR of the boot/root partition, and
not the MBR.

  (To install a Microsoft MBR: Boot an MS-DOS or Windows system.  Floppy or
CD will work.  Then run "FDISK /MBR".)

  (MBR = Master Boot Record.  The MBR is the first block on a hard disk.  
It contains a bootstrap and the partition table.  PBR = Partition Boot
Record.  The PBR is the first block in a partition.  Generally speaking, the
BIOS loads the bootstrap from the MBR.  That bootstrap then reads the
partition table to find the first Active partition, loads the PBR from that,
and chains into that.)

  Be careful of your partition table layout.  Linux will handle some fairly
crazy partition layouts without a problem, but many other OSes and programs
(including MS-DOS) will choke on them.  As a test, consider creating a
single large primary partition for your boot/root filesystem.  For added
measure, create the partition using Microsoft software.  Do not create any
other partitions -- not even a swap partition.  Then do the Linux mkfs on
that partition and install everything into it.

   Michael ODonnell is correct in that Linux generally does not care what
the filesystem type is.  So, try creating the partition in Microsoft
software, with an MS-FAT or MS-NTFS type, and then install Linux onto it,
without changing the partition type.

-- 
Ben Scott <bscott at ntisys.com>
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