'LI' on boot

[GoldenEternity]

I'm having some strange trouble with lilo at the moment. On boot, I reach 'LI' and then lilo stalls. /boot is on /dev/hda1; with about 35MB currently on that partition. I've re-run lilo several times, compared lilo.conf to another working system, run fdisk /mbr and re-run lilo, installed the most current version and re-run lilo.

This system was booting fine a couple days ago. The problem started (so far as I can tell) when I tried swapping the hard disks in this computer and setting a second hard disk on the same ribbon cable. I don't recall making any changes other than unplugging the drive and plugging it back in, since its last successful boot.

I've had 'LI' issues before (on my old 486, not this system), and have yet to find a satisfying explanation and/or solution to the problem.

(This question was accidentally posted to the general security forum as well... My apologies.)

 

[Zelandakh]

GE,

Does the problem go away if you remove the second HD?

 

[mbr]

Hi,

maybe you have to "auto-detect IDE drives" within the BIOS, or even have to key in the correponding values by hand..

mbr

 

[Tardigrade]

Hi,

A sanity check: Have you made sure the second HD is configured as a slave (probably jumpers)?

I know this is obvious but it's something I've forgotten to do b4 )

Good Luck
--
Scott

 

[MrTom]

this usually happens when drives are moved around. LILO has loaded the first stage boot loader but fails to find /boot/boot.b for the second stage.

it's possible that your bios reports the incorrect positions of the disks so lilo looks for boot.b on your second disk by mistake. when using your rescue/bootdisk, check that the drive ids are as you expect.

if the bios is playing tricks you can force it to a specific id.
disk=/dev/hda
bios=0x80

(check the lilo.conf manpage for an explanation of the above)

 

[denthijs]

maybe you are installing lilo to the first part of your root partition (letssay /dev/hda1) while theres still a corrupted loader in the mbr

the corrupted mbr loader would load first and could thus give such a result. even after repeatedly rerunning lilo

grts

 

[GoldenEternity]

Ah, I'm sorry, I didn't explain that well... I had attempted to put a second drive in there, or to swap the drives (needed access to some files on the second disk) but when I ran into problems, I returned the computer to its original state. The second disk is now sitting right next to my keyboard, and the computer is hooked up exactly as it was before.

Lilo is being installed to the mbr (/dev/hda).