Re: LILO

[" Raymond A. Ingles" <inglesra@frc.com>]

On Thu, 6 May 1999, Rahsheen Porter wrote:

> I recently (this morning), had a power outtage. I started up my computer and
> LILO started going nuts. Not only did it just say LI, but the cursor was 
> jumping all over the screen and the printer started to print.

 Your disk got corrupted. The symptoms sound like LILO tried to execute
some garbage, and ended up running a BOUND instruction. BOUND is a giant
mistake, caused by a combination of bad design and implementation at
Intel, and bad design and implementation at IBM. Basically, it's
theoretically for checking array bounds but actually ends up printing the
screen over and over forever. No one actually uses it, but it sometimes
shows up if you try to execute data as a program or something.

 If you have a backup, I'd suggest restoring. If not, see if your
partition table is okay. If it is, try booting the Debian rescue disk or
Tom's root-boot or something and see if you can fsck your Linux
partitions.

Sincerely,

Ray Ingles                 "...it's not a plain, ordinary steel nut: it's a
        (248) 377-7735      'hexiform rotatable surface compression unit',
                            which is why it cost $2,043 for just one..."
ray.ingles@fanucrobotics.com  William Lutz, on Pentagonese, in _Doublespeak_