Subject: Re: LILO trouble

From: Joshua Stockwell <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 14 Aug 1996 08:23:05 -0400

I had this exact same setup. Slackware on the slave disk and msdos on
the other master disk. And I just recently upgraded to Debian and ran
into the exact same problem. Silly me to forget to uninstall lilo
first!  The reason your boot is hanging is that it is looking for the
old lilo that doesnt't exist anymore. You need to re-install lilo.  If
your lilo.conf is setup right just type "lilo" and it should re-write
the MBR so you'll be able to boot normally. Lilo should be on your
linux partition, not your dos partition. Good luck!

	- Josh Stockwell

 Hakan wrote:
>>> I have a 486 on which I untill recently had MSDos and Slackware installed on 
>>> two diffrent harddisks, with LILO installed in the master boot block of the 
>>> msdos harddisk allowing me to select between the two operating systems. This 
>>> worked just fine.

>>> Now, I decided to convert into Debian (I just love it's package system), so I
>>> through out the Slackware stuff and installed the three disks base system. I
>>> had to install LILO by hand because the instalation package tried to install
>>> it on the linx partion, which is the second partion on the secon harddisk
>>> (/dev/hdb2). I placed it on (/dev/hda). Then I rebootet. Then insted of the
>>> LILO text that is supposed to show up when LILO loads I only got "L" followd
>>> by "04" repeated in what seemsed to infinity.

>>> I have tried bothe my old Slackware lilo configuration file, the new created 
>>> by Debian. I have tried both the lilo version that came with Debian and the 
>>> old one used by Slackware. I have tried having both the MSDos hd and the Linux 
>>> HD as the first HD. And Gud knows what else, but the result is just the same. 
>>> What am I doing wrong?

>>> I have temporarity solved the problem by using a MSDos boot disk with a menu 
>>> that allows me to either run the startup files from my HD after load MSDOS 
>>> from the floppy, or execute loadlin to load a linux kernerel from my msdos HD 
>>> and mount the root system. And this works acceptable. But it is not a decent 
>>> solution. And since LILO worked with Slackware, I see no reason for it not to 
>>> work with Debian. Any sugestions will be appricialed. Thanx.

---

From: Mike Taylor <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 14 Aug 1996 14:10:50 -0400 (EDT)

I made the same mistake that Joshua and Hakan made.  The READMEFIRST file
in /usr/doc/lilo gives two possible fixes:

 - In linux you can remove lilo from the master boot record with:
	lilo -U

 - In MSDOS you can remove lilo by:
	fdisk /mbr

The lilo -U fix did not work for me since I had already re-partitioned.
fdisk /mbr was successful.

Mike

---

From: Hakan Ardo <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 24 Aug 1996 19:11:36 +0200

Hi,
I finaly found some time to take a second look at my LILO trouble. Thanx for
all your suggestions they have taken me one more step along the way. First 
of all the Geometry settings was the same in the BIOS as linux reported. 

> fdisk /mbr was successful.

The same goes for me. I successfully uninstalled lilo with fdisk /mbr, but
when I reinstalled it I was back where I started. But now at least I can boot
my system in msdos mode and the turn to linux with loadlin, and I can live 
with that setup, even if I found LILO interface smooter. And thanx again for
all your grate support. Thanx to you I once again have a usable system.