I have tried installing Linux 4 times on two different computers and cannot get it to work. Everytime I try to install it I get through everything up until it reboots. Once it reboots i get one of two things. 1) it just says 'LI' and sits there and wont go further OR 2) I get 'LILILILILILILILILI.....' over and over and over again on the screen. What is happening. I have almost given up on Linux. AAAAHHHHH!!!

Dave

When LILO stop at LI it is because the first-stage boot loader was able to load the second-stage boot loader but has failed to execute it. This can be caused either by a geometry mismatch or by moving /etc/lilo/boot.b without running the map installer.

Since this is a fresh install we should be able to rule out the second reason. The problem is most likely that you have loaded LILO above the 1024 cylinder. Have you tried booting from a boot floppy?

The problem could also be that the BIOS is not passing the kernel the correct geometry for your hard drive. I would double check the BIOS settings to make sure they are correct. I would also add "linear" to /etc/lilo.conf (don't forget to run /sbin/lilo after).

linear mode
 

Linear mode for an IDE drive? I don't know much about linear mode, but I thought it was pretty much needed only for SCSI devices? Incidently, if anyone does run into the "LI" bug and their 'puter won't boot, just pop in a boot floppy, boot to DOS, and fdisk /mbr. If you're using RedHat 6.x you can go through the installation again and select Upgrade. Doing this will pretty much skip most of the installation and allow you to create a Linux boot disk as per the previous post.

linear will work fine with IDE drives. Linear causes lilo to use logical sector addresses instead of physical (cylinder-head-sector) addresses. This is useful when the BIOS "sees" a particular harddrive with a geometry different from the one Linux uses. The logical sector addresses remain correct independent of the geometry of the harddrive.

Not sure if you ever got Linux installed dbessell, but this brings up a good point. If linear mode IS there, try taking it out - the fix can work either way. Don't forget to run /sbin/lilo as root after making any changes to lilo.conf.