Subject: Boot Hangs on New Install

From: [email-masked] (Kevin K. Lewis)
Date: Fri, 6 Sep 1996 07:50:28 -0500

I just installed Debian 1.1 last night (overwriting my old Slackware
install).  I got through the smoke-test (ie, reboot), and everything
seemed fairly okay (got a couple warnings about post?-install scripts
not being found).  I installed my packages, setup X (my mouse won't
work ;-), user accounts, etc.

I then went to reboot.  I got:

LILO: Loading Linux

And that's it.  No dots.  Nothing.  But my disk light stayed on.  So I
decided to wait a bit.  Still nothing.  So I rebooted with my custom
floppy.  Came up fine.

My root disk (/) is hda1, set as bootable.  It's about 350MB (is this
a problem?).  The rest of this disk went to a 64MB swap.  There is
another disk (hdb) mounted on `/archive'.

I didn't try just using `vmlinux' instead of `vmlinuz' (I'd have to
take the `compact' out of `lilo.conf', right?).  I did compile and
install a new kernel, but it didn't help.

Does anyone have any idea what could have gone wrong?  I've had my old
Linux install working for ~3years.  Never a problem like this.

Thanks for any help.

-- 
Kevin K. Lewis               | My opinions may be unreasonable
[email-masked]       | but such is the voice of inspiration

---

From: [email-masked] (Kevin K. Lewis)
Date: Mon, 9 Sep 1996 08:38:13 -0500

Thanks to all those who responded.

Turns out that I needed to run `lilo'.  I'd feel stupid if I didn't
think that the installation process should have done this for me when
it copied the kernel from the boot disks.  It seems like there are two
possibilities as two why this didn't happen:

1.  The installation instructions are wrong (in which case the Debian
installation procedure needs to be modified, as this would be a gross
oversight).

2.  Something went wrong during my install.

Number 2 seems most likely.  But I saw no errors (and I was watching
closely).

But I am now up and running, and things are going well.  I'm very much
liking `dpkg'.  It has lots of nice features that make it hard to
screw up (I can even install the same package twice with no ill
results).

Thanks again, to the entire `debian-user' list.