I have a strange error with my linux install (i'm using the redhat 7.1 distrib).

I recently moved from Pennsylvania to Savannah and had my friend ship the computer after I left. However, for some inexplicable reason, my computer box (that I had shipped 3 times before) was clearly too mig to ship, so I had to settle to have my HD shipped separately.

I arranged to use a friend's computer here, but my hd i the fourth HD in the rig.

When I tried to boot from my drive (a maxtor internal 40 gig ATA) I get to lilo, where it offers me win2k or linux. Win2k loads fine, but when I try to load linux, I get a kernel panic. It says something to the effect of "

I suspected at first that it was a problem based on the fact that my HD is now hdd instead of hda. I tried to change lilo.conf accordingly via the redhat "linux rescue" boot. This was a bad idea, apparently (since I didn't get the lilo GUI anymore, and rather "LIL-" on a blank text screen), so I changed it back.

Inexplicably, when I switched lilo.conf back, I could no longer get the GUI, and instead get a blank text screen with the letters "LIL-" at the top of the screen. *sigh*

So this has become a great and seemingly unnecessary tragedy. What I want to do is make my linux and win2k dual boot via lilo or a comparable substitute. Please help; I'm without my usual linux gurus, due to the fact that I've been uprooted.

If you need more info, please ask and I will gladly supply it. Thanks!

--Tim A.

P.S. Everything was fine in my computer, I don't know what happened.

ok... the LIL- means that the table descriptor on the hard drive is corrupted... you'll probably need to remap the drive - i'm guessing that /boot/map got moved or changed.

can't help much further than that tho... have you done a search on LILO errors?

Well, I got win2k to load again... sorta... And I can see all my linux files when I use the redhat linux rescue via the chroot /mnt/sysimage deal.

is there a way to reinstall linux without losing my data? to get dual boot to work? *tears*

--Tim A.

Where have you actually got lilo installed? And how are you getting it to boot from the fourth hard drive?

As far as I know it starts with the first MBR on the first drive it can find so from the first drive you'll have to point the boot loader to the fourth drive.
And everything in lilo on the fourth drive should point to hdd and not hda. So you'll have to change the boot= and root= lines.

You'll might also want to change the entries in /etc/fstab since those should be hdd instead of hda also.

If none of that works you might want to try to put it in as the first drive just to test to make sure nothing got corrupted while shipping.

the LIL could also mean one more thing, that you dont have your bootup sequence set up right in the CMOS Setup utility.

Okay, much to say.

Firstly, I got advice on irc that I should change everything to hdd, and then reinstall lilo. Which I did. However, now all I get is an "L" on a blank text screen. This is significantly worse!

At this point even when I take out my drive, I don't get the NTloader anymore that he was using to dual boot win2k and win98.

Secondly, to get it to boot from the fourth drive, hdd, I went to the BIOS settings and switched the drive orders. this did not, however, change it to hda from hdd.

umm, I'm kinda at a loss here. I've gone from bad to tragic, and I need some help getting back to at least being able to boot from the hda drive...

I want to restore my master boot record, install lilo so it loads my linux partition correctly, but only when I set that drive as the boot drive in my bios. i'm getting many errors that I don't understand and I can't afford to clean the drives and start again. Please be patient

--Tim A.

P.S. What is fstab? like, what does it do?

what is the CMOS setup utility, and how can I run it?

When you turn on your computer, you press a key usually "DEL" to enter it. It is the heart of your computer. Here you can change various options, but the one your looking for is boot up sequence. Make sure you first hard disk you installed linux is the first boot device, followed by the other ones, it fixed my LILO problems.

You'll need to reload the ntboot loader back into your MBR cause you just overwrote it with lilo.
Just to clarify, have you put the HD back into your old computer or are you using it in your friends comp?

By the way,. This is an take from a help file.

LIL

The second stage boot loader has been started, but it can't load the descriptor table from the map file. This is typically caused by a media failure or by a geometry mismatch.

So the first suggestion you got might well be the right one.

I saw this often...
You scrap your MBR. Try booting DOS (or the thing win2k use as command prompt) from a winboot disk and type fdisk /mbr or fdisk mbr (dunno the right ones) this is suppose to restore your MBR but it will kill lilo...

The first bug was prolly because the drive wasn't hda no more but in wrinting something new in windows MBR (restarting lilo option) you broke something. Lilo is not safe

my friend had probably the same problem you are having now.

check /etc/fstab

check /etc/lilo.conf

know what drive/partition you want to boot from?

now check your hard drives/cabling and make sure they are where they are supposed to be. HDA is master drive of primary channel, HDB is slave drive of primary channel, HDC is primary drive is secondary channel... etc

my friend had win2k also... it searches for whichever drive to boot from, didnt have a problem

good luck!