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Re: [Plug] A question about installing Linux
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John Nolan wrote:
> >
> > Sometimes booting into dos with a floppy and doing a fdisk /mbr then
> > booting back into linux with a floppy and reinstalling lilo works for me.
> > Of course that works great when lilo mysteriously disappears and windows
> > boots up without my permission.
>
> When LILO halts after just printing "LI", it means that it can't
> find the kernel on the disk. This can happen if you install LILO
> with the wrong parameters, but it can also happen if for some reason
> the kernel is deleted or destroyed. This can happen if you
> inadvertantly delete a partition, or the partition goes bad,
> or if you just delete the kernel file and then boot.
> LILO must won't boot at all without a kernel, it hangs after "LI".
>
>
> If you are running Linux off of a DOS partition, and you sometimes
> run DOS/Windows on that partition, then kernel file can be moved
> (say, during a defrag) then at next boot-up LILO will not be able
> to find it. LILO does not use the filesystem to find the kernel,
> it remembers its physical location on the disk. So even if
> the kernel file is still there on the DOS filesystem, if it
> is in a new physical location, LILO is hosed.
>
> (I'm pretty sure this is how it works.... someone please correct
> me if I'm wrong.)
If you've got more that one OS in your lilo.conf, you should be able boot
another OS if your kernel's been relocated. I can always boot SCO or win or an
previous kernel if I forget to run lilo after a kernel rebuild.
I see the same symptoms when running win95 and it locks up and I reboot without
powering down. All I get is "LI" and it never fails to scare the poop out of
me!
I don't doubt your explaination, it's just that there appears to be other
causes for this behavior. Seems like DOS is the root of all evil here though,
doesn't it?
ray
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