Hello

I have just installed Slackware 10.2 on a 75mhz, 24meg ram comp with a 2gig HDD.

I tried installing Lilo to master boot record, but now when I start up it gives me errors like this: 01 40 40 40 40 40 40, spammed out over 20 lines in a row.
also tried to make lilo on a floppy but it said the floppy was damaged or wrong type, tried to format and tried about 5 other floppys which i knew was working just fine but still the same errors. Tried simple and expert mode to install Lilo but both have failed sofar.

Does anyone have a clue what I could do at this point? I can still start up linux using the boot disk, but i have to type mount /dev/hda and that each time, which is abit tedious.

This might probably be the biggest newbie question ever, but hey, one has to start somewhere.

Regards,
Millzelito

this isn't as newbie as you may think. I had had this problem uncountable times while learning to use linux properly, I don't remember if I had 40's or any other number, but I learned this problem is related to the boot partition, somehow you addressed a wrong, unexistant or unbooteable partition in the /etc/lilo.conf file.

In order to fix this it, you should boot from the slackware cdrom, type the correct boot partition for the kernel (as you might have already done before), wait for the system to boot, login as root, edit the /etc/lilo.conf file with your favourite editor (mine is vi) and type lilo to install the boot sector again. If you want to use master boot record anyway, you should type lilo -M /dev/hdX mbr where hdX is your boot drive; not the partition, the drive.

Good luck Millz, welcome to Slackware. I hope this helped somehow, I know my english might be kind of erroneous / confusing

Peace.

You may also want to try geometric or linear options in lilo.conf which provide compability with older BIOS. Take a look at lilo.conf and lilo man pages.

also invalid partiotion table is possible (maybe not probable, but possible)
it happens sometimes that partition table written by fdisk is interpreted by e.g. partition magic as invalid and vice versa
I do not know the reason, but if you are still in troubles, try to check partiotion table somehow

Make sure you didn't specify a partition on the lilo boot line such as

boot = /dev/hda2

when you should only be specifying the device as

boot /dev/hda


Just try to simply reinstall lilo too. I've had this problem too I just can't remember now which of these 2 suggestions fixed it.

Hello again guys!

First off I would like to thank you all for the replies, I will test them all out as soon as I get back to my linux box tomorrow morning.

Just wanted to re-ask again if anyone had the same problems with creating a boot disk from inside the slackware installation? (wondering cuse my slackware disks aint bootable, burned them from win and from what I read you must create them from linux to make them bootable)
It kept referring to some 1.68 meg disks it wanted me to be using? What is that? I thought the 1.44 megs were the standard ? =)

Cya laters guys,

Millzelito

just shoot it straight away by command "makebootdisk"
insert 1.44 ur standard floppy then slack will format it 1.68
then syslinux is ready for u to boot your slack

cheers

For the floppy boot, try:

boot = /dev/fd0 # add this to /etc/lilo.conf to point lilo to look at floppy boot sector

command line:

$ mformat a:
$ lilo

the label a: seems... weird on linux, but looks like it's correct (according to man pages got through Google)

it is going to erase anything in the floppy, isn't it? doesn't it need a kernel image along with the format in the floppy?

mformat will rewrite the boot record of the floppy (I believe the first 512 bytes of data). It does not completely reformat it.

What it does is it gets it ready for lilo to do its job.

It does not need a kernel if you use the following lines in your lilo.conf:

image = /boot/vmlinuz # points to a kernel on the /boot partition
root = /dev/$YOURDEVICE

Remember to run /sbin/lilo after saving.

This will use the kernel from your hard drive and boots that. It does not really make an emergency boot disk, if that's what you're looking for. What it does is allows dual OS boot if Windows doesn't like lilo booting it.

Floppy in for Linux.
Floppy out for Windows.

Sorry ^^^^^^^^ that prolly won't solve your problem.