I've searched this forum extensively for lilo problems, and I haven't found a reference quite like the problem I'm having.

Running RedHat 6.2 successfully for some time in a dual boot setup with Win98 on a IDE and SCSI system. Disks are setup as follows:

/dev/hda - Win98
/dev/sda1 - swap
/dev/sdb1 - /boot
/dev/sdb5 - /
/dev/sdb6 - /usr

The Win98 disk is a 1.6GB, and I want to add a second IDE drive to supplement my Windows disk space. I have a 13.6GB drive that I tried to add as Primary Slave or Secondary Master, but when I do that, Lilo hangs at "LI". Take out the second IDE drive, and everything works again.

(I'm using System Commander as the main boot manager, and when I select Linux from its selection menu, it starts Lilo on the SCSI disk. Also, my computer is old enough that the BIOS only recognizes 8GB of the new large disk.)

My fstab file is:
==============================
/dev/sdb5 / ext2 defaults 1 1
/dev/sdb1 /boot ext2 defaults 1 2
/dev/cdrom /mnt/cdrom iso9660 noauto,owner,ro 0 0
/dev/sdb6 /usr ext2 defaults 1 2
/dev/fd0 /mnt/floppy auto noauto,owner 0 0
none /proc proc defaults 0 0
none /dev/pts devpts gid=5,mode=620 0 0
/dev/sda1 swap swap defaults 0 0
/dev/hda1 /mnt/windows vfat defaults 0 0
==============================

My lilo.conf file is:
==============================
boot=/dev/sdb1
map=/boot/map
install=/boot/boot.b
prompt
timeout=50
linear
default=linux

image=/boot/vmlinuz-2.2.14-5.0
label=linux
initrd=/boot/initrd-2.2.14-5.0.img
read-only
root=/dev/sdb5
==============================

I ran /sbin/lilo and got no error messages. Just a warning about sdb1 not being the first disk, and warnings about drive 0x82 maybe not being accessible (that's the swap drive).

I tried changing linear to lba32 since I'm not currently using anything like EZ Drive, but that gave me a syntax error when I ran lilo so I put it back.

I'm out of things to try. Anyone have any suggestions?

Thanks,
Jerry

This is a nasty problem to solve. Add these two lines to the top of your lilo.conf

disk=/dev/sdb
bios=0x80

then run lilo again.

Regards

Martin,

Thanks for the suggestion. However, though running lilo is now cleaner (no warnings), booting now results in a continuously scrolling screen of:

LI
LI
LI
LI
.
.
.
.


Hmmm. Now that I think about it, shouldn't that address be 0x83? My swap disk is 0x82, and my main Linux drive is 0x83. I'll change the line and report back.

-Jerry

Changing to the correct address for the drive helped quite a bit. It boots up perfectly now. Thanks much for the suggestion, Martin!

Now, can you or anyone tell me if I might have boot problems if I add EZ Drive to my Windows98 system so it'll recognize the full 13.6 GB drive?

Thanks,
Jerry