Re: lilo config is busted, need help fixing it
On Sat, 25 Sep 2010 00:17:30 -0500
Stan Hoeppner <stan@hardwarefreak.com> wrote:
> briand@aracnet.com put forth on 9/24/2010 7:42 PM:
>
> > right now I'm thinking I've got something misconfigured, but what ??
> > Running lilo manually should fix whatever's going on and it most
> > certainly isn't.
>
> Did you possibly lose your BIOS LBA configuration before the
> dist-upgrade, and didn't know it? If your CMOS battery had died,
> which is quite common on 4-5+ year old systems, and you rebooted the
> PC, when it came back up your BIOS data would be at defaults. In
> this case your disk geometry in the BIOS may have changed from say,
> LBA, to LARGE, or NORMAL.
>
> If this occurred, it "might" explain your problems. Once the system
> is booted after you manually specify /dev/sda2 at the prompt, the ATA
> driver may be defaulting to LBA mode. Thus, when you run lilo, it's
> basing sector translation on block offsets using LBA. When you
> reboot, if the BIOS is set to NORMAL (CHS) or LARGE, the translation
> isn't going to match what lilo saved in the MBR or the first sector
> of a partition, whichever method you use.
>
> When you specify /dev/sda2 at the prompt, the bootloader is working
> with the current BIOS translation setting and correctly finds the disk
> sectors for the root filesystem. This may explain why you can
> successfully boot in this manner, but not using the normal automatic
> lilo boot--the sector translations may be different.
>
> This is all a shot in the dark and I could be smoking crack. But, it
> _seems_ possible given your symptoms. Check your mobo BIOS, or PCI
> card disk controller BIOS, if that's what your disk is attached to,
> and make sure the drive translation is set to LBA, which is likely
> what it was before.
I have it set to auto which is what it's always been set to.
Brian
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