cannot boot to F14

[James McKenzie]

On 6/24/11 3:55 PM, Michael Hennebry wrote:
> On Fri, 24 Jun 2011, Michael Hennebry wrote:
>
>> On Fri, 24 Jun 2011, jackson byers wrote:
>>
>>>> I messed up installing F14 and don't know how to fix it.
>>>> What I had planned to do was reuse a /boot partition and put the rest
>>>> in a single new partition I had already created for the purpose.
>>>> I forgot about the /boot partition and I think I told it the
>>>> wrong thing when it asked where to put the bootloader.confusing "reuse
>>> # grub>
>>> root (hd1,8)
>>> setup (hd1,8)
>>> quit
>>>
>>> this should install the bootloader on 1st sector of sdb9
>>> reboot,
>>> see if f14 boots
>> Alas, F13.
>> I suspect that the problem might be that putting a bootloader
>> in (hd1,8) doesn't make the startup code (BIOS?) use it.
> I tried adding
> title chain14
>   	rootnoverify (hd1,8)
>   	makeactive
>   	chainloader +1
> to grub.conf .
> When I tried to use it, I got
> Error 18   : Selected cylinder exceeds maximum supported by BIOS.
>
You need to get a new(er) BIOS as the physical location where F14 is 
located cannot be used for booting by your current BIOS.  Nothing can be 
done about this by Fedora, it is a physical limitation of your system.  
Maybe putting a /boot partition below where your BIOS can boot from 
could help (but I don't know if this is possible with your current 
system configuration.)

> Could the problem with using my boot partition with my
> F14 be that my F14 knows something else is /boot ?
> Could I fix that by editing my F14's /etc/mtab ?
>
Neither of these options will help.  Again, this is NOT a Fedora issue.  
Some BIOS's are old enough that they cannot boot from newer media.  And 
this is not the first time this has happened in the history of PC 
configurations (I remember the old 32MB boot issue...)

James McKenzie