[svlug] LILO

[Rick Moen]

Quoting Gies, Dennis (dennis.gies at intel.com):

> I believe the LILO HOWTO discusses this problem, and there's also a fair
> amount of stuff on the RedHat site.  Keep in mind that this was about 7
> months ago, so this problem might have been fixed by now.  Anyone know for
> sure?

Yes, the "problem" will be fixed when the last junky IDE host adapter
and the last junky IDE hard drive are finally laid on the rubbish heap.

This perennial problem amounts to, as you indicated, either (1) 
the Linux kernel couldn't figure out the drive geometry, probably
because the information it got from the BIOS is wrong, or (2) 
you're trying to load bootable code (kernel and/or /boot directory)
from somewhere above logical cylinder 1024.

In a small minority of cases,  The problem arises post-installation
when the sysadmin moves /boot and restarts without re-running /sbin/lilo.

I see it as fundamentally a hardware-setup problem.  Cross-check what
the BIOS setup table shows for that drive against what Linux's fdisk
shows.  If they don't match, there's your problem, and you need to
provide correct geometry at boot time via an "Append" keyword in 
/etc/lilo.conf.  Try also inserting the "Linear" keyword.  Try 
removing the "Compact" keyword, if present.

I don't encounter these problems on SCSI, and so must warn that I'm
just passing on third-party information.

-- 
Cheers,                Linux:  It is now safe to turn on your computer.
Rick Moen
rick (at) hugin.imat.com

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