FAQ (Frequently asked questions) 1. Do I have to pay money for GAG? 2. Where's the mouse cursor? 3. What is the Boot Floppy option intended for? Can I delete it? 4. How can I uninstall GAG? 5. I want a version of GAG in my language. What do I have to do? 6. I can't boot Linux from GAG. What can I do? 7. I have an AZERTY keyboard, and I can't do some actions. 8. I have two (or more) MS-DOS/WINDOWS primary partitions. I was able to access to them, but now with GAG I can only read the boot partition. Is it a bug? 9. When I install GAG 4.0 in my hard disk, I receive a 'Disk error' message, but GAG 2.1 works fine. What's the problem? 10. I can't boot OS/2 with GAG. What do I have to do? 11. When I choose the 'Add operating system' option, GAG doesn't show all my partitions. What happens? 12. Does the floppy disk image file must have 1.44 megs of length, or can I cut it? 13. I don't want LILO to ask me for an operating system, after being booted from GAG. Is there any solution? 14. How can I select what Linux kernel I want to boot from GAG? 15. GAG shows some partitions in black, and others in blue. What does it mean? 16. I want to boot a Linux partition that is beyond the 8 Gigabytes limit, but LILO stops loading, showing a 'LI' line in the screen. 17. Can I boot a Windows installed in the second, third... hard disk? 18. When I boot a Windows 95/98/ME installed in the second, third... hard disk, I can't see the CD-ROM icon. How can I fix it? 19. After uninstalling GAG, my system doesn't boot because my primary partitions are still hidded. What can I do to fix it? 20. After uninstalling GAG, I can't boot my computer. It shows me an error message. What does this mean? 21. Can I use a bootable CD-ROM instead a floppy to boot the installer? 22. How can I create more than one DOS primary partitions? The Windows'FDISK doesn't allow to do it. 23. When I boot Windows from the second/third... hard disk, I receive a virus alert. Why? 1. Do I have to pay money for GAG? No, you haven't. GAG is free software, distributed under a GPL license. Of course, if you want to pay money you can do it, just write me (look my e-mail address at the end of the text). For more details about the GPL license, read it in the main menu. 2. Where's the mouse cursor? GAG can't use (yet) the mouse. You must use the keyboard. 3. What is the Boot Floppy option intended for? Can I delete it? You can delete it and add it again later if you want or need it. That option allows you to boot a disk from GAG, so you can disable the option of booting from floppy in the BIOS SETUP. If you need to boot from a floppy, you can use GAG instead of enabling it again. This is good because if you restart your computer, you don't need to drop out the floppy from the drive. I hope to add support for booting from CD-ROM too. 4. How can I uninstall GAG? Just boot with the installation floppy (or CD) and choose the option 5. 5. I want a version of GAG in my language. What do I have to do? Just write me, and I'll send you the files you have to translate and how. 6. I can't boot Linux from GAG. What can I do? Be sure you have installed LILO in the SuperBlock of your Linux partition. That is, if your root partition is /dev/hda8, be sure you install LILO in /dev/hda8, not in /dev/hda. 7. I have an AZERTY (or QWERTZ) keyboard, and I can't do some actions. That's because the PC computer's BIOS were developed to use QWERTY keyboards. In France it is common to use AZERTY keyboards, they have a different layout of the keys. The same occurs in Germany, where they use QWERTZ keyboards. To fix your problem, just select AZERTY or QWERTZ keyboard when the installation program asks you. To know what kind of keyboard you have, just see the first six letters in the upper left corner. 8. I have two (or more) MS-DOS/WINDOWS primary partitions. I was able to access to them, but now with GAG I can only read the boot partition. Is it a bug? No, it isn't a bug. To allow users to have more than one version of DOS, or to have DOS and Windows, or DOS and OS/2, or Windows and OS/2, GAG will hide all the primary partitions located BEFORE the boot partition (this is a new behaviour; in old versions, all partitions were hidden). This is done to avoid interferences during the boot proccess. Starting from GAG 4.3 you can choose the behavior of this option. If you want to be able to see your primary partitions, just be sure that the option "HIDE PRIMARY PARTITIONS" is DISABLED (this is, it has no "OK" arrow). 9. When I install GAG 4.0 in my hard disk, I receive a 'Disk error' message, but GAG 2.1 works fine. What's the problem? GAG stores itself in the first track of the hard disk. This track is reserved for this kind of programs. The versions 2.1 and earlier were much smaller and could be installed in only 17 sectors. The new version 4.0 needs 42 sectors. If your hard disk is old (maded before 1992) and/or you haven't the LBA mode active in the BIOS, it is possible that it has not enough sectors in the first track to store GAG 4.0, so you must use GAG 2.1. But don't worry, with newer hard disks (made after the year 1992) this will no happen. 10. I can't boot OS/2 with GAG. What do I have to do? GAG can boot OS/2 only if it is installed in a primary partition. If your OS/2 is installed in an extended partition and you want to have the benefits of GAG, you must still use the IBM Boot Manager. To do this, just put the IBM BM timer to zero seconds, and configure the icon of OS/2 to boot the partition where the Boot Manager is stored. Another problem is when OS/2 is installed in a primary partition in a hard disk that is not the first hard disk. In this case, you must say YES to the option 'Exchange drive letters' when you add the OS/2 partition to GAG. In this case you don't need to use the IBM Boot Manager. 11. When I choose the 'Add operating system' option, GAG doesn't show all my partitions. What happens? There are two possibilities: a) It is possible that you have one or more partitions that starts beyond the 8 Gigabytes limit, and your BIOS is old and does not support the extensions that allows to boot from them. In that case, GAG has to use the old access method, which cannot access data located beyond that limit. This occurs in motherboards with BIOSes created before 1998, and in old SCSI adapters. b) You are attempting to add a partition that is in the second, third... hard disk. GAG shows only the partitions for ONE hard disk each time, so to list the partitions in the second hard disk, you must press the '2' key. Then, GAG will show you the content for the second hard disk. If you press the '3' key, GAG will show you the content for the third hard disk, and so on. (easy, isn't it? :-) 12. Does the floppy disk image file must have a length of 1.44 megs, or can I cut it? Not really. At this momment, the GAG disk image needs about 600 Kbytes. But in a near future, new language versions could be added, so I strongly recommend to use the whole 1.44 megs file, instead of cutting it. 13. I don't want LILO to ask me for an operating system, after being booted from GAG. Is there any solution? Yes, there is. Log into your Linux box as root, and edit the file /etc/lilo.conf. There you must delete the lines: delay=nnn prompt (where nnn is a number). After saving the file, just run 'lilo' (without quotes) from a shell or command line window. 14. How can I select what Linux kernel I want to boot from GAG? GAG can't select a kernel to load (this is why you must still use LILO), but there's a trick to do it. You will need as many EXT2 partitions as kernels you want to boot. But don't worry: you can count your 'root' (/) partition, your '/home' partition, your '/usr' partition, etc. into this, so if you want to boot two kernels and you have your system divided into two or more partitions, you don't need to create more. You have to install a different LILO in each partition, with one kernel selected in each one. To do this, you must select a different map file in each lilo.conf file that you create, because that file contains the data for LILO's second stage for each boot. Save each lilo.conf with the configuration of each kernel to boot with a different name in /etc. As an example, you can name them as 'lilo.conf.1', 'lilo.conf.2', and so on. install each lilo.conf.n file with: lilo -C lilo.conf.n This will install lilo using the file 'lilo.conf.n' instead of the default 'lilo.conf'. Since each 'lilo.conf.n' file has a different partition target, kernel and map file, you will install a different LILO in each partition. Finally, go to GAG and add each partition with LILO to it (of course, with different names, or you will not be able to distingish between them :-) Remember: use a different map file (map=/etc/map.n) in each lilo.conf.n file. If you don't do this, only one partition will boot successfully, and the others will hang with a 'LIL-' text on the screen when you try to boot them. And don't worry: the map file is created by LILO each time you run it. You don't need to create one before. 15. GAG shows some partitions in black, and others in blue. What does it mean? Don't worry, it's not a bug. Black partitions are the primary partitions, and blue partitions are the extended partitions. I added this to help people to configure GAG more easy. 16. I want to boot a Linux partition that is beyond the 8 Gigabytes limit, but LILO stops loading, showing a 'L' (or 'LI') line in the screen. That's because you need a rece...
Kot_Maciek