Re: woody: boot fail after upgrade

["Howard Chin" <howard@thechins.net>]

>> On Friday 08 October 2004 02:40, Howard Chin wrote:
>> I installed woody using the stable distribution a few weeks ago. Recently
>> I decided to upgrade to the testing distribution because the packages are
>> more up-to-date in that distribution.
>> So I changed the apt source in /etc/apt/source.list and replace the word
>> "stable" with "testing" in the http entry.
>> I then used dselect to update the package list and installed all the
>> recommended packages and upgrades.
>> After the upgrade, I can no longer boot. The system hang right after the
>> BIOS screen with only "Li" printed. Seemed like something went wrong with
>> the bootloader. Can someone let me know how it can be fixed?
>> Howard
>
> Hi Howard,
>
> According to the Lilo man page, the first stage loader tried to pass control
> to the second stage loader, but it detected an error.  Are any hex digits
> printed after the LI?  If so, they give information about the nature of the
> error.

First thanks for your response, Justin; but no unfortunately, there is nothing
after LI
>
> It is very unusual that upgrading your software would cause boot problems of
> this nature.  Did you change any hardware configuration?  Did you install a
> new kernel?

No. The HW has not changed. I am not sure if the kernel is upgraded or not. I
didn't check the dselect list of SW upgrade. However, it doesn't look like the
kernel has been loaded yet at the failing point.
If I am not mistaken, I think lilo itself may have been upgraded. I am not
sure about this but I think I saw some messages about upgrading lilo scrolled
past the screen.


I think the first thing I will need is to mount the HD so that I can have
access to the HD. I can boot using a CD to a shell. There are a few important
files that I want to rescue. If I can do that, the worse case is to reinstall
the system which I can afford to do since I have only been building up my
server and have not put it to any real work yet.


I am newish to linux and am not quite sure how to mnt the HD. It will be much
appreciated if someone can let me know how.


Thanks.
Howard