Problem of booting

[liam321 at 123mail.org]

On Thu, 13 Sep 2007 00:22:07 +1000, "James Takac" <p3nndrag0n at gmail.com>
said:
> On Wednesday 12 September 2007 23:22:33 Velix Wibowo wrote:
> > Hi All,
> >
> > I have a problem of booting up the latest version of ubuntu linux. Today, i
> > have been started to install the linux on my machine. Then, the system
> > warns me to take the CD out to prevent a live CD running rather than the
> > current installed one. Until that point, the problem starts when i was
> > booting up my computer to run linux on my machine. After a few seconds,
> > this message comes out:
> >
> > Booting from local disk...
> > GRUB Loading stage1.5.
> >
> > GRUB loading, please wait...
> > Error 18
> >
> > The message above stays there forever. Then i was trying to open up my BIOS
> > by restarting my computer again. However, i can't open it suddenly, and the
> > system says an error of my system. I feel desperate about this and right
> > now, i just can rely on my live CD to be able to send this e-mail to all of
> > you. If someone knows how to solve it, could you please let me know
> > immediately? Thank you.
> >
> >
> > Regards,
> >
> >
> > Velix Wibowo
> 
> Hi Velix
> 
> I've seen that on my other laptop before when grub got messed up. I had
> to 
> boot the live cd and reinstall grub from it. The following link may help
> you 
> 
> http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=224351
> 
> James
> 

I googled the following, not sure it'll help you, but you'll get an
idea:

---------------

http://www.gnu.org/software/grub/manual/html_node/Stage2-errors.html#Stage2-errors

18 : Selected cylinder exceeds maximum supported by BIOS
    This error is returned when a read is attempted at a linear block
    address beyond the end of the BIOS translated area. This generally
    happens if your disk is larger than the BIOS can handle (512MB for
    (E)IDE disks on older machines or larger than 8GB in general). 

---------------

http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic.php?t=122656

Grub error 18
info grub wrote:
18 : Selected cylinder exceeds maximum supported by BIOS. This error is
returned when a read is attempted at a linear block address beyond the
end of the BIOS translated area. This generally happens if your disk is
larger than the BIOS can handle (512MB for (E)IDE disks on older
machines or larger than 8GB in general).
Try an update for your BIOS and/or move your boot partition to the front
(or at least into the appropriate range). 

---------------

http://wiki.linuxquestions.org/wiki/GRUB#Error_18

Error 18: Selected cylinder exceeds maximum supported by BIOS
This error is returned when a read is attempted at a linear block
address beyond the end of the BIOS translated area. This generally
happens if your disk is larger than the BIOS can handle (512MB for
(E)IDE disks on older machines or larger than 8GB on others.). In more
practical terms this means the BIOS is unable to start executing the
kernel because the kernel is not located within the block it can access
at boot up time.

This can be circumvented by creating a boot partition at the beginning
of the disk that is completely within the first 1023 cylinders of the
harddrive. This partition will contain the kernel.

The kernel itself does not suffer from the same limitations as the BIOS
so after the BIOS has loaded the kernel the kernel will have no problem
accessing the whole harddrive. Newer BIOSes will automatically translate
the harddrives size in a way that it can be completely contained within
the first 1023 cylinders and hence modern computers do not suffer from
this problem.
The same error can happen when the BIOS detects a disk in a different
way as Linux does. This can happen when changing motherboards or when
moving a GRUB-bootable disk from one computer to another. If this
happens, just boot with a GRUB floppy, read the C/H/S numbers from the
existing partition table and manually edit the BIOS numbers to match. If
using a SUSE linux and installing on VM Ware this problem is solved by
creating a small partition at the very beginning of the harddisc, and
mounting it as /boot. 

---------------

Regards

Hugo Heden






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