[plug] LILO, I mean LI

[Jonathan Young]

Hi all.  A LILO problem I am battling with...

Basically the problem is:

After a (semi) scheduled reboot yesterday where nothing was suspected to
be wrong, we get "LI" on screen and that's it.  After that (have to
hit reset) the BIOS reports "Checksum Error - Defaults Loaded".  I
reset the BIOS settings and leave the hard drive parameters at 'Auto'
which does detect the drive correctly (and always has as far as I know).
Every time we boot Linux its "LI" and then nothing, followed by the
BIOS error on the next POST.  Every time I boot something else (floppy,
Live CD) the BIOS does NOT give that error...

NB:  An auto-upgrade yesterday did mess with Postfix (introduced an
upgraded library that was incompatible with a couple of existing config
files) and it's not my system, so how do I find out if the Auto-update
messed with Lilo too?

What I know so far:

LI, from what I know, is a diagnostic from LILO (not the machine hanging).

The letters LILO are displayed in combination and if only LI are
displayed, it is generally caused either by geometry mismatch or by
moving /etc/lilo/boot.b without running the map installer.

That is the limit of my LILO knowledge already, so I don't know how to
fix the latter if that is the case.  Or it could be (as mentioned) a
damged (upgraded) LILO installation.  What should I be looking for? And
where?

I have booted a live CD and mounted the drive's partitions so I am free
to browse and repair.  I thought about using lilo -u /dev/hda and then
putting it back, but LILO is not included on the Live CD (Ubunto 5.04).

I also figure that 'Auto' is the correct BIOS setting if I am having no
problem accessing my partitions.

Any ideas of where to go next on this??


--
Jonathan Young
Director of PC-PHIX
jonathan at pcphix.com

Phone: 0410 455 674
Web: http://www.pcphix.com/