Hi,

I've been trying the past 2 days to install Zenwalk to an older Dell GXPRO, which is running an OverLeap Processor (Celeron 2) @533 MHZ. However, it has a CDROM Drive which is not bootable. To overcome the CD boot problem I downloaded "Smart Boot Manager" by Chris Li, allowing me to switch from A: drive to E:.

Next, I made a CD from a Zenwalk ISO download on my newer PC.

I am using a 20 GB WD HD as target for the install. It is taken from a scrapped NT machine. I initialized the disk by using WD's Data Lifeguard tools to put a win 98 MBR and win 98 partitions on it. Apparently WD's DLG Tools found it in graet shape.

Then I ran an install from CDROM of Zenwalk by first using "Smart Boot Manager" by Chris Li to switch from Floppy to CDROM.

In the install, I deleted the Win98 partitions and created 4 Linux partitions (1 bootable, another a Swao), and everything appeared to go fine until the time came to install the LiLo boot loader. At this point I get an error (labeled # 1 by the installer) that says that the system in unable to install Lilo.

No explanation why, only a message that says I can always run lilo after editing the lilo.cong file.

Great, but...

How am I to run this program IF I CAN'T GET INTO LINUX????

Can anybody help me here? I've made and scoured dozens of searches on Google for information, but either the Linux terminolgy or paradigm is too foreign for me to comprehend, or I'm missing something right before my eyss.

Please, I meed some direction. I feel like I'm one step away from my destination, but a chasm separates me from it. And all I need is a 6 foot board to cross rhe chasm.

Thanks to anyone who can help.

Steve

Just a though, can Zenwalk use grub? In my experience, grub may not be quite as user friendly to set up(personal prefence) but it has much more helpful error messages. There are also times, like AMD64 that you flatout can't use LILO(so I ahve been told). Not caring one way or tahe other if I can get my system to boot, I haven't looked into anything much into differences or reasons to use LILO versus GRUB.

As for particular errors for lilo, I can't help much, but Grub has many sites listing error codes and fixes for various distros.

There is also the possibility of switching distros... or looking more heavily into LILO issues; How far does it get?:
http://www.wlug.org.nz/LiloErrorCodes

Or is it a during installation error?
http://www.linuxforums.org/forum/sla...ilo-error.html Sounds like it may be of help to you, though the mods will now stalk me for posting to a different forum

I wonder why the install couldn't install Lilo. Strange.
However, you can run lilo from a LiveCD, or from your install CD if you can get a shell there. Perhaps easiest is to mount your HDD partitions and use chroot to switch the environment. After this it is just a matter of running lilo.

Thanks guys, for the input.

Ichecked a thread listed at the bottom of my thread "Zenwals, anyone using it daily?". and found it referrered to this forum:

http: // www .slackplanet.org

and in particular one entry discussed how to run the OS from the cdrom itself:

http: // www .slackplanet.org/index.php?topic=6.0

From Dan2552:


That's how I'm going for now. Redshirt, thanks for the links, especially the second which seems to hit my problem squarely. I will be using a lot of the info there and hopefully there will be a conclusion. (Maybe if I find something I can post it :P).

Emerson, thanks for that info. I guess you and Dan2552 were on the same wavelength there.

I'll get back with how things turn out, but I going to use Dan2552's suggestion, along with trying to install Lilo once I get into the installed OS.

Again, thanks all.

Steve