Re: flashing LEDs: LILO & keyboard
Quoting Major A (phy10296@physcip.uni-stuttgart.de):
>
> Hi there!
>
> This is a serious problem I have had in the past few days. After
> installing the latest Debian distribution on a PC, I recompiled a new
> kernel, and installed it with LILO. Now the machine boots correctly, but
> when the LILO prompt appears, the keyboard LEDs start to flash, and no
> keyboard input is possible. X11 can be started, but without mouse or
> keyboard control. All other things work fine (network etc.).
>
> The hardware is a single Pentium II, 440LX chipset, three SCSI disks on an
> Adaptec AIC-7881, no IDE devices (IDE ports are off). The strange thing is
> that there is no problem when you boot from the debian boot floppy, and
> there was no problem during installation after the base system was
> installed and the machine was rebooted. The problem appears whenever I
> boot from the hard disk. It is not even possible to select a kernel image,
> as no keyboard input is possible after LILO appears on the screen (it also
> works fine before this point). Also, the problem is independent of the
> kernel image and the lilo configuration (I also tried it with the
> lilo.conf file supplied by debian on the base system). The compact and
> linear flags do not help either.
Well it sounds as if you've unintentionally triggered some sort of
"unattended start" feature in the BIOS. Rather than having to enter
a password before the machine boots at all, the password entry is
deferred so that as much functionality can be provided as you have
configured (e.g. if LILO has a default setting, booting will continue
to the login prompt and all the daemons will be running if you've set
runlevel 2) without any bystander being able to mess it up.
Flashing leds is quite usual for this state. So perhaps you need to study
the computer/mobo/bios documentation.
Cheers,
--
Email: d.wright@open.ac.uk Tel: +44 1908 653 739 Fax: +44 1908 655 151
Snail: David Wright, Earth Science Dept., Milton Keynes, England, MK7 6AA
Disclaimer: These addresses are only for reaching me, and do not signify
official stationery. Views expressed here are either my own or plagiarised.
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