Re: LILO HANGS-Linux Nor Windows Wont Bootup
Problem solved. Thanks everyone for your help. Examined lilo.conf and ran lilo to fix once able to boot. Running lilo showed adding linuz, linuz.old and hda1(windows) at completion. I tried all suggestions and found that my system wouldn't format a 1.722MB floppy and don't have a CD burner so settled on making a debian rescue disc. The weird thing is that the rescue disc wouldn't bootup either giving the same error: "boot failed, please use another disk." I was able to boot up into dos with windows startup disc and read lilo.conf. Stranger still, I tried my debian linux boot disc again after having tried to boot with it many times and getting the same old "boot failed, try etc.", it booted up immediately. Now, go figure as they say. I'm baffled. Maybe my floppy is going bad.
Thanks for all the suggestions. I learned something from each of them.
Leonard Chatagnier
----- Original Message -----
From: "Sam Watkins" <swatkins@fastmail.fm>
To: "Leonard Chatagnier" <lenc@ruralcomm.com>
Cc: <debian-user>
Sent: Thursday, December 16, 2004 11:56 PM
Subject: Re: LILO HANGS-Linux Nor Windows Wont Bootup
> On Thu, Dec 16, 2004 at 05:48:15PM -0600, Leonard Chatagnier wrote:
> > BlankAfter several apt-get updates, upgrades and pkg-upgrades Lilo hangs and
> > wont boot. The Lilo screen comes up clean and starts with LI and a blinking
> > cursor and that's it. My linux boot disk wont boot either saying to use
> > another disk. Windows boot disc wont work either, just hangs in the floppy
> > drive. Before rebooting when the problem occurred, I checked out Mozilla
> > browser and email client and everything worked ok. Appreciate any help to
> > get system booted again. Please email reply to lenc@ruralcomm.com as I am
> > not subscribed.
>
> Do you have a rescue disk? a lilo boot disk won't work if there kernel isn't
> where it expects to find it.
>
> I suggest get a copy of knoppix and boot using that for a start. I suppose you
> can boot from CD-ROM?
>
> Alternatively you can make old-style boot-and-root floppies or get a copy of
> tomsrtbt (a single floppy rescue disk) from http://www.toms.net/rb/
> He has instructions to make the disc from dos or linux.
>
>
> Once you've booted into linux, you should be able to mount your root filesystem,
> something like:
>
> mount /dev/hda1 /mnt
> cd /mnt
> ls
>
> you can then chroot into it:
>
> chroot /mnt
> mount proc
>
> and run lilo to hopefully fix the problem, maybe edit /etc/lilo.conf first.
>
>
> I have had some trouble doing this before where it didn't like the device
> files in the chroot environment, even /dev/null didn't work. I forget why
> this is.
>
> Apparently you can also run lilo from outside the chroot if you give it the
> right command-line options, something like:
>
> lilo -r /mnt
>
>
> good luck! & let us know if it doens't work
>
>
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