[lug] LILO and LIes

[D. Stimits]

John Starkey wrote:
> 
> > Did you solve your problem or did you give up
> > and installed a real OS like  Win95 ?
> 
> Believe it or not this all started with an attempt to get gnome running
> and set everything up so I can do my work on Linux and get rid of the
> Windoze machine. I work with a company that uses a proprietary code for
> displaying HTML, ASP, JS pages, this code/app is created in partnership w/
> M$. But the biggest problem is that I code a lot of MSWord docs that I
> need to see exactly the way they were intended.
> 
> I was trying to install the XFree86 4 and needed a newer version of
> ld.so. Then glibc2 (which I assumed/hoped contained ld.so) came up with
> some errors in linux and asm header files so I'm doing the kernel now.
> 
> > One thing that crossed my mind: Some stupid, silly
> > boards have virus protectio on their MBR, preventing
> > anything from writing to this part of the disk.
> > And some of these virus protected boards won't give
> > you an error if you try to write to the MBR.
> > Check your BIOS settings.
> 
> Yes this is one of those silly boards :} But it was/is disabled.
> 
> What about reinstalling LILO? I don't wanna use rpms. I never have any
> luck with them. I'd feel more comfortable if I just compile it myself for
> now. I'm gonna try to track down the src right now.

You could take the following risk, which isn't uninstalling the lilo
app, but uninstalling the boot record, and reinstalling the boot record.
Make a boot floppy first, and be sure it works (e.g., make bzdisk).
lilo -v -v -v -u /dev/hda

Then put it back in.

> 
> It does seem to me that this is a lilo issue. I spent a few hours
> compiling different variations of the kernel, with/without modules
> enabled, using just the defaults, etc. Then I tried using make install
> instead of copying the images over and running lilo myself.

Not sure if this is relevant or not, but it is within the 2.4 kernel
series that the newer lilo changes to support larger than 1024 cylinders
was added...it's possible that the old version really doesn't work right
for some reason with the new kernel. Is "lilo" or "LILO" mentioned in
the 2.4 kernel doc at /usr/src/linux/Documentation/Changes? Or is there
a lilo file in that directory?

> 
> But the whole reality as, I think you stated is that lilo says it's got
> the kernel ready to go, but on restart it's not there.
> 
> Thanks
> 
> John
>