Very Computer

I have two physical IDE drives - 1) WD 1 Gb - 600 Mb primary DOS
                                            - 400 Mb extended DOS
                                 2) WD 540 Mb - 450 linux native
                                              - 90 linux swap
I am trying to install LILO but keep getting 'LI' and the system hangs.
  I THINK that I have tried most of the installation methods
  outlined in the DRx.LINUX book with no success.

I can boot from a floppy with no troubles.

What am I doing wrong ??

Thanks

Darren

: I am trying to install LILO but keep getting 'LI' and the system hangs.
:   I THINK that I have tried most of the installation methods
:   outlined in the DRx.LINUX book with no success.

I'm having the same problem, I can boot up with a floppy and use
mount root=/dev/hda1 at the LILO prompt but I can't see to get LILO to
boot past LI from my hard drive ( a 540mb Quantum ). I've installed LILO
on the MBR and flagged the disk as bootable from linux fdisk, I'm useing
the slakware professional distribution from last months Personal Computer
World mag. Any ideas or pointers to more information would be appreciated.

Thanks

Paul

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 | Plassey Technological Park,                                          |
 | Limerick, Ireland.                                                   |
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: I have two physical IDE drives - 1) WD 1 Gb - 600 Mb primary DOS
:                                           - 400 Mb extended DOS
:                                2) WD 540 Mb - 450 linux native
:                                             - 90 linux swap
: I am trying to install LILO but keep getting 'LI' and the system hangs.
:   I THINK that I have tried most of the installation methods
:   outlined in the DRx.LINUX book with no success.

What does your lilo.conf file look like?

- Alan

Dunno, you don't give us an awful lot of information as to what you
did for us to be able to tell what you did wrong...

Every time you modify the /etc/lilo.conf file you must run lilo again
to update the MBR (or whatever you are updating)...

If this isn't the problem, why not post the lilo.conf file so we can
see if that's right...  What commands are you doing, and what exactly
do you expect to happen?

Ciao for now, Alex...

I read the README file last night and discovered that the letters of 'LILO'
that you get before the system hangs can provide diagnostic information.  
Getting 'LI' means something like "The first stage boot loader was able to
load the second stage boot loader, but was unable to execute it."  Apparently
this can be caused by a geometry mismatch or by moving the 'boot.b' file
without running the map.

I ran fdisk and looked at the partition information of my DOS partitions.  For
both my primary and extended partitions it said that the partition does not
end on a sector boundary and tells me what it should expect.  

Is this a 'Geometry Mismatch' ?
Could this be causing my problems ?
Does this have something to do with using "BIG IDE" drives ?
How do I rectify the situation ?

Darren.

I has the same problem. This can be corrected by giving the disk geometry and
another parm to the kernel, e.g.:

hd=1440, 16, 63
linear

Note that this has to be added to /etc/lilo.conf using the append keyword.

Cheers,
Bela Ban

: Is this a 'Geometry Mismatch' ?
: Could this be causing my problems ?
: Does this have something to do with using "BIG IDE" drives ?
: How do I rectify the situation ?

: Darren.

I had another shot at LILO last night, I was getting the same LI crash. I
put linear in the global part of the /etc/lilo.conf file and voila !! LILO
booted like a charm. I don't have a clue what linear does but I sorta
remembered that it has something to do with disk geometry.

All I've got to do now is get it to recognise my soundblaster, other drive
and then get X to work on my Mach64 :(

It beats the hell out of a nice shrink wrapped windoze installation.

Hope that helps,

Paul

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 | Plassey Technological Park,                                          |
 | Limerick, Ireland.                                                   |
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