Hi All,
I'm in a slightly frustrating situation due, primarily, to two things: my
relative amateur use of Linux, and this particular problem happening on a
Debian Linux box that I didn't originally setup. I'm particularly new to
Debian, and new to having to handle many things with linux.
I have a Dell PowerEdge 600SC, 2.4Ghz PIV, 80GB hard drive. It was running
Woody.
At someone's suggestion, I edited my /etc/apt/sources.list to update
essentially to sarge (he had done it, he's vastly more experienced, I was
trusting, and then he became unavailable -- traveling, I should have
waited). I seemed to go through the process just fine, got asked some config
questions, I believe I answered them correctly and before I knew it, it was
over and I had a couple of errors about a couple of things that didn't
totally install (don't remember what they were, but I think I know what they
weren't -- didn't say anything LILO for example, that I saw).
Anyway, I rebooted to see how everything worked. And all I got was a black
screen with some text that spit back my processor speed, cache size, bus
speed, etc. And then, on a new line the character "LI" and a blinking cursor
after that.
Someone suggested that maybe LILO got screwed up or mis-installed. They said
I could possibly re-install LILO, from say a net-install CD that I had. I am
not sure how to buck the regular install process. When I try, I get pulled
into the disk partition tool. I am not sure what I need to do.
My goal is to resurrect this system without killing the data in /home.
The partition layout looks like, as displayed by the Sarge installer's
interface to the partition tool, including a couple of odd little icons:
IDE1 master (hda) - 80.0GB WDC WD800BB-75FRA0
#1 primary 57.5MB fat16
#2 primary 509.9MB swap (odd little smiley next to this)
#3 primary 79.4GB ext2 (odd little lightning bold/crooked arrow next
to this)
Any suggestions, particularly any detailed steps -- the hardest thing to
find -- would be very welcome.
Best regards,
Matt