[ILUG] 'nother question about booting...

[Ivan Kelly]

if lilo is giving you so many headaches use grub.

On Fri, Sep 21, 2001 at 08:00:56PM +0100, Ronan Cunniffe wrote:
> 
> I have a k6-200 machine, which I can't get to boot from hd.
> Once booted from a kernel floppy, there's no problem, LILO
> installs fine, but on a reboot it gets to 'LI' and no further.
> 
> Q.  Have you RTFM?
> A.  Yes, O Guru.
> 
> Q.  Have you *understood* TFM?
> A.  Um... not entirely.  So this is what I "know".  Can someone
> knowledgeable confirm/correct the following?
> 
> Stopping at 'LI' is a feature, not a bug.  It means that the first stage
> has loaded (in MBR/partition BB), but the second (in one of those
> mysterious files in /boot?) has not.  This means the correct partition is
> set bootable, that LILO has been correctly installed, but that stage 1
> can't call up stage 2.  This sounds like LBA vs 'LARGE' vs BIOS mebollox
> I thought I'd got a grip on.... except I've very carefully kept / in the
> first 1024 cylinders (it's the first 64MB! I was desperate!)  So my only
> guess is that there's a change in numbering scheme, and LILO is looking in
> the wrong place.
> 
> Go on, somebody.... show forth your mystic aura....
> 
> Ronan C.
> 
> P.S.  Said machine's BIOS has recently started reporting drives on the
> secondary controller as being on the primary, and not detecting drives
> mounted on the primary, so if the answer to my problem is 'get a mobo with
> a better BIOS' I won't be too disturbed.  At least any more disturbed than
> usual. ;-(
> 
> 
>