On Tue, 2008-06-03 at 21:12 -0400, Douglas A. Tutty wrote: > On Tue, Jun 03, 2008 at 07:47:01PM -0400, Ken Heard wrote: > > > What happened earlier today is more or less typical of the what I have > > been up against. I was able to complete the eighth installation with > > the xfs file system and KDE. On the recommendation of the installer I > > used the LILO boot loader instead of GRUB. > > I don't remember the installer making a recommendation for LILO. I'd go > with GRUB. The installer installs LILO in cases that GRUB can't handle. Since GRUB has to grok the block device and filesystem on which the /boot/grub folder resides, it's no good if you try to boot from an LVM partition, for example. LILO just points you at a particular part of the disk and says "Start reading here", roughly speaking. So LILO's dumbness has its advantages. How exactly are you installing? Are you doing any unusual (raid5, LVM, some uncommon filesystem) configuration of the root filesystem? If so, I would recommend creating a separate ext2 /boot filesystem so that you can use grub to boot. Once the kernel is loaded, it should be able to understand any exotic set up you were able to create at install time. > > > > One of the first things I did by way of configuration today was to run > > aptitude update and then to run aptitude upgrade. On of the packages to > > be upgraded was the kernel (2.6.18-6-686). As part of the configuration > > of this package by aptitude, I was told that this was the same kernel > > already installed and that consequently I would have to reboot as soon > > as the upgrade was finished. > > Well, at least you know the installer will work since you are able to > run aptitude. I do wish that Debian didn't use the same kernel version > number for updates since on very rare occasions one ends up with an > unbootable system. > > > I did so, but the reboot ended when the machine hung after returning > > the following the following message: > > > > "LILO 22.6.1 Loading EBDA is big; kernel setup stack overlaps LILO > > second stage" > > > > What does this message mean? What if anything can I do to get the > > machine working again? (Subsquent boots returned the same message after > > booting?) > > > > Or is my only option to attempt a ninth installation and hope for the best? > > Since I don't know how to fix the error you describe, I would go with the 9th install, trying the method I suggested. > > I don't know what the problem is since I haven't used LILO since, I > think, Potato (IOW, I think I was using Grub on Sarge). > > You could go ahead and reinstall and use Grub. If you want to try to > fis things, here's what I'd suggest: > > 1. Boot the installer in rescue mode and get a shell chrooted to > your system. It will then be like the system booted. > > 2. Use aptitude and install grub while removing LILO. > > 3. Since the kernel install itself went OK, you may now be fine. > > 4. If not, Grub may give you a better error message. > I somehow doubt this will work. The installer probably chose LILO for a good reason. -davidc -- gpg-key: http://www.zettazebra.com/files/key.gpg
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