[plug] LILO, I mean LI

[Tomasz Grzegurzko]

Jonathan Young wrote:
> 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??
> 
> 
> --

What are your system partitions configured as? I used to see this all 
the time until (regardless of system age) I started configuring a /boot 
partition (~50MB, depending on the size of your HDD overall) and it 
solves this. Many bioses are buggy when trying to boot from the >1024 
cylinder.. Your bios error messages may indicate you have one of these 
bioses..

Otherwise, your /etc/lilo.conf may need to be tweaked on options such as
lba32
compact

Toggle them; it may help.

Or use grub, sometimes I've seen one fail constantly (grub in the case 
I'm thinking of) where one works perfectly (lilo did its job 100% fine!)

Tomasz