Re: Problem Booting After Install

[Stephen Hewitt <sjh222@usa.net>]

Please CC replies since I am not subscribed

Scott MacMaster wrote:
>
> This seemed to have no effect.  After looking through the man I found an
> option that I can use to specify bootable partition.  I tried using that
> option but it also had no effects.
>
> Any other thoughts?


Here's a few thoughts - have you tried using another floppy? -see (3) below.

Because I also have seen repeated 01 printed to the screen when attempting
to boot with lilo from a floppy, and on three different ocassions:

1. The first was when I had accidentally deleted the kernel and the map
file and the other files lilo uses from the /boot partition (!)...

2. The second was a few weeks ago installing Debian when I had attempted
to put lilo on a floppy.  The problem went away after I copied chain.b
boot-menu.b boot-text.b to the floppy (and modified the lilo configuration
file accordingly) and told lilo to put the map file on the floppy (and ran
lilo again obviously)  So just to clarify, here is the successful lilo
configuration file.  The floppy mounted on /floppy

boot = /dev/fd0
map = /floppy/lilo-map
vga = normal
read-only
lba32
prompt
install=/floppy/boot-menu.b
disk = /dev/hdb
bios = 0x80

  image  = /boot/vmlinuz-2.2.20-idepci
  label  = GNU/linux
  root   = /dev/hdb3

  other  = /dev/hdb1
  label  = micorsoft
  loader = /floppy/chain.b

I havent had time to investigate further so I cannot say whether it was
having these files on the floppy instead of on /boot that solved the
problem or whether the act of making another floppy solved the problem.

(By the way, I found the disk=/dev/hdb and bios=0x80 lines necessary to
avoid another problem because although there is only one disk in this PC,
for some reason it is on the secondary controller)

3. These are the notes I made just afterwards: "The first ext2 filesystem
lilo floppy i made failed to produce even a menu during boot up - it
failed in a way very similar to what I have described above for the case
where i didnt have the map and the .b files on the floppy What it did was
to print the list of PCI things, then L from (LILO) and then repeatedly
01."

"According to the latex document above, LILO prints L then I then L then O
as it boots up and each letter tells you it has reached a certain stage.
ANyway it seems as though this was because there was a corruption of the
floppy, even though fsck said it was ok.  I conclude this because I
created a second disk as far as I could remember without changing the lilo
configuration file, and that worked, producing a menu."

The latex document I mentioned was found on a nearby SUSE machine at
/usr/share/doc/packages/lilo/user.dvi

Hope some of this gives you some ideas

Stephen