Suse Linux 7.3 LILO problem... LI
 

Hi,

I hope someone can help...

I am installing Suse Linux 7.3 on a clean hard disk (18 Gig). I have no other hard disks in the system. I let linux use the whole hard disk and let it decide what size to make the partitions. I know the boot partition is starting at sector 0. When I reboot for the first time I just get "LI" I have tried to reinstall with no change in the results.

I also tried to boot off of a WIN98 Cd and do a fdisk /mbr to make a new boot record and then reinstall... no luck!

thanks for any help.

I am runing AMD Athalon 900mhz on an ASUS K7V board.

From newbie to newbie
 

Hello,

maybe I should not interfer with this as newbie but I looked into my (German written) Linux "bible" by M.Kofler and he writes a bit about this. Maybe it is of use for you:

1) "LI" means that the second part of LILO was loaded but that there was a problem with executing it.

2) It could be
a) a problem with the harddisk geometry. You may insert the option "linear" into lilo.conf or explicitly describe the harddisk with sectors, heads and cylinders.
b) the file /boot/boot.b could not be found. Are there maybe parts of the kernel file outside of the 1024 cylinder limit? Mr.Kofler writes, you could insert the option "lba32" into lilo.conf.

Well, a lot of things, but how do you make all this if you cannot boot at all?? I do not know! :'(

Can you use a boot disk?

Sincerely yours,
Bernhard, JAN (="Just another newbie")

Post the contents of lilo.conf, and tell us how you partitioned the drive (for example: /boot = /dev/hda1, /= /dev/hda5, swap= /dev/hda6, etc.).

Hum
Lilo is REALLY NOT a safe prog. I suggest you (it's annoying but it's safe) to make a floppy lilo boot disk instead... Dunno why Lilo seem to have bad problem to write something on the Mbr of few computers (like mine). Or you can prolly use your linux cd to boot.

lba32 is worth a try, so is linear

to set it up boot a floppy and mount the drive where /etc/lilo.conf is


try them one at a time.

Try Grub:

http://www.linuxgazette.com/issue64/kohli.html
http://www.linuxjournal.com/article.php?sid=4622

It's is a must if you upgrade your kernel, because Lilo have a tendency of messing up things.