Kernel Compact Mode
 

Hello yall,

I have RH9 with the most recent kernel. I have tried on one the more occasion to put the system in compact mode for faster booting. I edited the lilo.conf file and put compact in it. I even have a file called lilo.conf-up2date. . . and put it there too. However, it is still not going into compact mode.

The system before I did all of the updates had a "Boot Manager" listed in system tools, however, now it does not.

Does anyone have any ideas? Thanks.

Could you post your lilo.conf file?

I have posted lilo.conf and lilo.conf.up2date

"lilo.conf" 31L, 553C
prompt
timeout=50
compact
default=linux
boot=/dev/hda
map=/boot/map
install=/boot/boot.b
message=/boot/message
lba32

image=/boot/vmlinuz-2.4.20-20.9
label=2.4.20-20.9
initrd=/boot/initrd-2.4.20-20.9.img
read-only
append="hdc=ide-scsi root=LABEL=/"

image=/boot/vmlinuz-2.4.20-8
label=linux.bak
initrd=/boot/initrd-2.4.20-8.img
read-only
append="hdc=ide-scsi root=LABEL=/"

other=/ptional
label=Windows

image=/boot/vmlinuz-2.4.20-20.9
label=linux
append="hdc=ide-scsi root=LABEL=/"
read-only
initrd=/boot/initrd-2.4.20-20.9.img
dev/hda1
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
"lilo.conf.up2date-1064033946.551687" 25L, 419C

prompt
timeout=50
default=linux
compact
boot=/dev/hda
map=/boot/map
install=/boot/boot.b
message=/boot/message
lba32

image=/boot/vmlinuz-2.4.20-20.9
label=2.4.20-20.9
initrd=/boot/initrd-2.4.20-20.9.img
read-only
append="hdc=ide-scsi root=LABEL=/"

image=/boot/vmlinuz-2.4.20-8
label=linux
initrd=/boot/initrd-2.4.20-8.img
read-only
append="hdc=ide-scsi root=LABEL=/"

other=/dev/hda1
optional
label=Windows

As I understand it compact means that you want to boot a flash card. Yet you are telling lilo to boot /dev/hda.

Try redirecting the boot to the flash card by adding two lines immediately after /boot=/dev/hda:

/boot=/dev/hda
disk=/dev/hda
bios=0x80

If this does not work you will probably need a boot floppy to get back into Linux.

See the disk= parameter in:
man lilo.conf

Umm, no. I don't agree with you. If you can go to your gui boot manager and look for lilo, you will see a check box there that says compact mode. This makes the kernel boot much faster. For some reason, when I updated my kernel to 2-20 or whatever the most recent version is, the entire boot manager part of the gui disappeared.

"Umm, no. I don't agree with you."

I did some searching with Google and you are right. I though that the compact option was used to boot from a flash card but it really means to boot a hard drive faster. Therefore my answer is irrelevant to the problem.

Hopefully this answer makes more sense:

When you change lilo.conf you have to run the lilo command from the command line for the changes to take effect at the next boot. Running lilo is probably something that your Red Hat GUI probably did for you every time you updated lilo through the GUI.

So your changes not taking effect could be explained if you have not run lilo from the command line.

oh, okay. So, what do I do? Just log in as root, go to a terminal and type lilo and that's it?

"Just log in as root, go to a terminal and type lilo and that's it?"

Yes.

Better have a boot floppy just in case.

Done, works fine now. Thanks Steve.