Red Hat 1st boot displays L
 

i had win98se on a system, a i decided to install Red Hat 7.3 over it. I installed graphically, as workstation with Gnome. i configured X Windows, and then it prompted to reboot. i rebooted, and it goes through the BIOS check, then it just displays and L and the bottom left. i have reinstalled about 4 times now. LBA is enabled. it's an AMD k6/2 333mhz, and inside i have a linksys NIC, Diamond Speedstar A50 video card, and generic sound card. i booted with rescue disk (the one you make at the end of installation), and entered Linux ... it says i should change disks, but there are no disks to change. i tried vmlinuz root=/dev/hdb and it goes through these commands by itself, then gives some PANIC line and the caps lock and scroll lock keys flash on and off. please help, i know like no linux. thanks.

Did you install LILO on your MBR or your first partition?

MBR every time

i had a similar problem where an Li would show up but my problem was that MBR had another loader on it. if that's not the case, maybe someone else can help. Someone's bound to have an answer. good luck.

yeah i dont have any other OS loaded on it... thanks i will try installing the other way, but it'll probably do the same thing then. so please... anyone else!

installation 8.0
 

I'm upgrading from 7.2 to 8.0 I'm getting a kernel panic unable to mount root fs 3:01
I already tried to allocate my ram during the boot it didn't work what do I do?

AMAZING! i just went through the whole install again, and chose first partition instead of MBR. it still came up. someone help!

Can you post your /etc/lilo.conf file, and the partition scheme that you used to install Linux.

To get partition scheme do a:

fdisk -l hd* ---> Replace the star with the letter of the HD, ex. hda for first primary controller, hdb first slave controller, and so on. Most likely it will be hda for you.

Sounds to me like /boot is too far into the HD for his BIOS so post your partition scheme here.

i cant do fdisk, cause the only way i can enter any commands is by booting with the floppy or cd-rom. and that takes me to a <b>boot: </b> prompt. i enter the command and it says <b>can't find kernel</b> i have no clue what is wrong with it, and am not sure what type of scheme you are looking for. please help.

did u install the distro from the CD? if so boot again from the CD and type in rescue at the prompt.
it will give u a shell ... and mount ur root for u.
then u can take a look at the present configuration of ur disks.

u post it here and then we see what can be done.... we all will help u.. for sure.
and yes i guess the /boot partition is really too far beyond the 1024 limit.

good luck

sorry about my lack of responding, work and school stuff goin on.

okay... i went to rescue mode, then did chroot /mnt/sysimage... then i put fdisk -l /dev/hdb (cause /dev/hda, doesn't give me anything). i think this is what you guys want to know:

Disk /dev/hdb: 15 heads, 63 sectors, 13424 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 945 * 512 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hdb1 * 1 108 50998+ 83 Linux
/dev/hdb2 109 13008 6095250 83 Linux
/dev/hdb3 13009 13424 196560 82 Linux swap


that's what you want... yeah??? oi! i am gonna get this stuff working eventually, well... someone is.