Hi guys,

I've been using Lilo on multiple machines to boot multiple operating systems for a while now. I'm starting to notice problems now that I'm running some of my Slackware machines with JFS root filesystems. I'm getting a screen full of nines (99 99 99 99 etc) when I reboot the machine and it happens almost all the time, sometimes even after I just updated Lilo.

Since Lilo at boot time does not use filesystem access but absolute disk address to find kernels it can boot anything. But since it saves the kernel address it may not work with filesystems that move things around and I think this is the problem. Maybe this doesn't happen much on Reiserfs and hardly ever happens on ext2/3 but it looks like it could be the problem with JFS.

Has anybody noticed anything like this? Is Saikee still around?

Thanks,
Rand

Couple of suggestions. Try Grub, as it is more forgiving and can be configured on the fly. Or, for multiple linux distribution installation, share a common root partition. It only needs the root and initrd.img file, which can easily be mirrored on the distro's partition if needbe.

GrueMeister, I did think of Grub and I may go ahead and learn it. I have been pretty happy with Lilo and I have gotten it to do anything I've wanted without any problems but it may have reached its limits.

Your other idea is also a good one. I've always recommended not creating a boot partitition since it's almost never necessary. Here's a good time when it could help- if I set up an ext2 boot partition I bet I could use Lilo and I would never have a problem. I may do this since it's easier than learning Grub

Thanks for your reply.
Rand

Where did you install lilo ? MBR or elsewhere ?

using ext2 and problems went away.

if anybody is using JFS or XFS and not having problems please update this thread.

H_TeXMeX_H sorry I didn't see your question. I always install lilo in the MBR of all my drives and this is what I've always recommended.

Ok, well I think installing lilo to anywhere but MBR on XFS causes problems ... but this is not the case here because lilo is installed to MBR and the filesystem is JFS.

Well, all my machines use JFS and lilo in MBR. So far I've had no such symptoms as you describe.

Maybe you should report the bug ? http://jfs.sourceforge.net/

or is it lilo that is the problem ? maybe grub would be better in this case ?

I am running 10.2 and 11.0 on JFS, and there is no problem, well to be fair, the 11.0 machine is a multiboot, so lilo is on the MBR of NTFS, but on my machine with only 10.2 It is just JFS. I also read about lilo and XFS, and if you are running a root XFS partition, maybe it would be better to just make a separate /boot partition as an ext2. I don't know why XFS cannot support lilo or maybe even grub at that matter on it's superblock. Maybe sgi's xfs site might have an answer or at least a clue.

Speaking of JFS, I wonder if IBM will ever release JFS2 for Linux. I know that JFS is used on AIX, and was also used on OS/2, until OS/2 got dropped. I just wonder how much longer IBM will keep AIX around, since IBM for a while now has touted itself as supporting Linux.

Hi guys,

I am running a mixed box with multiple OS and multiple filesystems [mix of reiser, ext2/3, JFS.] I think the problem is not a LILO problem and not a JFS problem etc. I suspect it's caused by the assumption that LILO makes that the kernel is not going to move on the disk. I'm not sure this is a valid assumption and seems not to be valid for JFS.

If someone says they're running pure JFS and that they're using LILO with no problem I'm not surprised- maybe their kernel isn't moving. A lot of it probably is affected by how full the filesystem is, how it's used, etc. There seems to be some problem here and after I switched those partitions to ext2 I haven't seen it again. I also had very few problems with reiserfs. It did happen but not very much. It is good that you are also using it on a multiboot because you will be more likely to see if there are any issues interacting with various filesystems and Linux machines etc over time.

I don't think LILO will have problems booting from XFS, JFS, etc. But it may not be stable because of what I wrote about.

To some of the other comments...I think AIX is going to be around for a very long time. It's optimized for the hardware it runs on and you have to understand that IBM hardware and software is very closely coupled, not like UNIX and UNIX hardware. Linux can be ported to AIX hardware but it isn't going to be the best choice, and none of the critial software that AIX users are running will run on Linux- it's not written in C and won't be ported easily.

If I had a crystal ball I would say we're a lot more likely to see some virtualization with AIX running natively and then virtual Linux machines running under it, on AS/400 machines etc.

As far as JFS/JFS2 goes I hope that IBM will not only keep it open but also stay behind it. If they just release it to the open source community there isn't any guarantee that the high quality will remain because there are a lot of things for people to work on in their spare time and it's hard to choose. Filesystems aren't that glamorous but they're pretty important

I don't know what you mean by in the MBR of NTFS because there's only one MBR per drive and NTFS is a filesystem not a drive!

thanks,
Rand

One other thought that hit my head now, is it also might depend on how you set lilo up, whether you let lilo do an automatic install, or an expert manual install. I tend to also notice that whatever filesystem you use for lilo, it works best if you do a manual install. I have had failures installing lilo automatically, but no problems whatsoever with a manual approach. Seems that lilo just doesn't always 'guesstimates' one's partition setup correctly, and just doesn't always work 'automagically'.

[edit]

Actually JFS and JFS2 are rather different filesystems. Taken from Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Jou...em_2_%28JFS2%2
Also, check this link.. http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infoce...s_jfs_jfs2.htm

I don't use the installation script to generate a lilo config.