As some of you may know, we have come across and solved a pesky little problem
with installing Linux and NT together on a single machine.
The Problem
While attempting to install NT and Linux on a system at DZero, we found that
after installing Linux, the NT system would not come up and would issue a Blue
Screen error of "STOP: Error: 0x0000007B Inaccessible_Boot_Device" However,
linux would boot with no problems. Here's what we did to create this
error:
Installed NT 4.0 on a single 4096Mb NTFS partition
Applied Service Pack 3
Installed Linux on the remaining portion of the drive
Installed LILO on the MBR as the boot manager
There are two contributing factors to this problem:
a) LILO is written to the Master Boot Record (MBR)
The Solution
When installing NT and Linux on a system, do not make the primary NT partition
larger than 2Gb (2000MB)! If extra space is necessary, create a second
partition. This goes for all installations of Linux and NT on any size disk
drive. Why it NT even allows you to install on 4096Mb is beyond my
comprehension and everyone I've talked to in outside industry only install NT
on 2Gb or less, and they aren't installing Linux.
In this configuration you can then install LILO on the MBR as your boot
manager with no problems and NT will not crash at boot up.
It's almost short enough to fit on a T-shirt. :)
And Furthermore...
This morning Stephen Smoogen at Red Hat pointed me to the release notes of the
next version of LILO (0.21) at
ftp://lrcftp.epfl.ch/pub/linux/local/lilo/lilo-21.announce
from which I will quote:
********
Changes from version 20 to 21 (5-DEC-1998)
-----------------------------
Boot loader
-----------
<snip>
- first-stage loader code begins with the byte 0xFA (a CLI instruction).
This works around the "INACCESSIBLE_BOOT_DEVICE" blue screen bug of
Windows NT 4 (reported by too many people to mention)
<snip>
********
However, he also mentioned that the LILO author considers 0.21 too
experimental at this stage to use, and that we should wait until version 0.22.
Thanks to all for your patience and assistance.
Dan
PS This message has been added to the Fermi Linux-FAQ at
http://www-oss.fnal.gov/fss/documentation/linux/linux-faq/index.html
_________________________________________________________________________
Dan Yocum | Phone: (630) 840-8525
Computing Division OSS/FSS | Fax: (630) 840-6345
Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory | email: [email protected]
P.O. Box 500 | WWW: www-oss.fnal.gov/~yocum/
Batavia, IL 60510 | "TANSTAAFL"
_______________________________________|_________________________________