[svlug] LILO

[Harry Souders]

I experience this exact problem after installing RedHatv5.1, Debian, 
Slackware etc. on a computer.

I found two ways to solve the problem:

The first method is less dangerous, but doesn't always work. Grab and 
old DOS boot disk. Boot into disk and type "fdisk /mbr" (this has 
been discussed here earlier).

The second method, probably dangerous, was to use the low level HDD 
format option from my BIOS's setup (Award BIOS in this case).

As the person below mentions, the (likely) reason LILO go messed up 
in the first place is that your BIOS gave RH incorrect info about 
your drive or perhaps RH guessed incorrectly about your drive. Once 
RH or whatever OS you use get the correct drive info you should be 
able to rectify this problem.

Btw, after getting the "LI" and nothing else message I tried to 
install win95 and then winNT in frustration. It was around this time 
I noticed that the OS's were incorrectly thinking my 7GB drive was 
something like 500MB.


> Scott Jaderholm wrote:
> > 
> > I installed RH on my 486 33.  I tried to install Debian and Slackware but
> > both of them went crazy about my pretty little 4x cdrom and refused to
> > install.  Well I got the install done w/ LILO in the master boot record and
> > all but now when my comp loads up I get LI  Yep that is right just "LI" not
> > LILO.  Someone on IRC told me to just boot it w/ disk and run lilo again
> > and that would fix it.  Well I did and I still have that problem.  What do
> > I need to do?
> > 
> 
>   Each of the the letters indicates a stage in the boot procces.  LI is
> indicative of a geometery mismatch.  Check out he lilo docs for more
> info.  Try putting in linear, and commenting out compact in
> /etc/lilo.conf, and rerun lilo.  Also check to make sure  that the first
> line reads
> 
> boot=/dev/hda (for ide)
> or
> boot=/dev/sda (for scsi)
> 
> -- 
> On the Net no one can tell you're running NT.
> Nor will they hear your screams.
> Samuel Flory sflory at varesearch.com
> 
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-----------------------------------
Harry Souders - hsouders at calweb.com
http://www.calweb.com/~hsouders
-----------------------------------

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