lilo problem after upgrade on sid

[Praveen Kallakuri <praveen@unlserve.unl.edu>]

hi


i've been running sid and after an apt-get -f upgrade yesterday morning, i
found that my lilo hangs. the letters "LIL.." come up and it simply
freezes. i read through several man-pages and lists and figured that the
lilo may be pointing to incorrect map or something simply wrong with the
MBR. 

several people have mentioned creating a boot-floppy using mkboot. can i
create a boot-floppy on another sid machine using this utility (by
specifying the correct boot partition?) if i point to a boot partition
like /dev/hda5, how will it work since that device may not be created at
boot (on mine its something like /dev/ide/bus0/target0/.../part5). i also
bumped into this location, is that all thats needed?

ftp://ftp.debian.org/debian/dists/sid/main/installer-i386/current/images/floppy/access/

the second alternative was that i install grub or lilo again. is there a
way to do this via the installation CD? i find the option to install grub
but am afraid that it looks like the installation will reformat the
partition (the help on installation says any partition with a :) will
retain data but the rest will be erased). is there an installation version
that will allow me to just mount formatted partitions and install grub or
lilo? 

thanks


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praveen