Hi folks,

I honestly tried a search here and on the web and came up empty or I just don't know what to put as a query.

I had (have) Slackware64 14.1 installed on my second hdd. I even had it up and running and doing extremely well, able to surf the 'net and compile app's for the 64 bit system etc.

As I was done installing apcupsd, I entered /etc of my 64bit systeme and had the /etc of my main system on my sda drive open to copy the directory over to the 64bit side to make things easy (as I'd already done with a few other files before this).

For some reason I can't remember, I was looking at rc6 and accidentally clicked on it which, of course, caused the system to reboot.

I figured it was funny and a stupid goof but it should boot just fine.

The boot the first time got to 'LI' and just hung there.

I booted with the slackware64 14.1 iso dvd but it uses grub instead of what the 32bit dvd uses and trying got me nothing other than it telling me it needed to load the kernel first...but doesn't tell *how* to do that.

So, I tried through 'setup' and only did the 'reconfigure' section to try and re-install lilo (I don't like grub).

After that, I rebooted and now the screen stops at a screen-full of '9a's' and then just hangs.

I have no clue what accidentally clicking on that rc6 did. I had only krusader open but nothing was building or anything, and I think maybe Seamonkey was open also, but that's all that was going on when I accidentally clicked it.

Not sure now what to do and really don't want to re-install as I've got a slew of apps already built and installed for the 64bit side and it took a looooong time to get those all done and installed and working.

Anyone have any ideas I can try to get my sdb to get past the weird screen-full of '9a's' and running correctly again?

But from the install DVD, chroot into the installed system and try to install lilo from there.

Seriously, this is what you get when running your GUI as root.

Can't seem to figure out how to chroot correctly. Main hdd (what I'm able to get into and on now) is /=/dev/sda2, on the hdd that something happened to, it's /=/dev/sdb2. When I I get either something about /bin/bash or that /dev/sdb2 isn't a directory.

And I wasn't running as root. I *never* run as root except a konsole on the desktop to build something to install. I truly appreciate the help, but presuming like that wasn't called for. As a matter of fact, although I do use the GUI 99.9% of the time, I can't remember the last time I booted into the root desktop...it's been at least a few years.

clicking on anything in /etc/rc.d/ won't harm anything

if you changed rc.S, that might cause problems
but looks like the kernel, try fix with lilo

1 members found this post helpful.

You chroot woes are in your command line usage. Should be like this (from man page):
NEWROOT needs to be a directory... you need to mount your root partition here before calling chroot (/mnt is likely target to mount it to).]
COMMAND needs to be a program to run, in this case /bin/bash seems most useful.
So, a likely command line should look like this:

2 members found this post helpful.

Thanks, j_v and genss. I was able to use the 32bit dvd and got to chroot into it somehow and performed lilo, but that didn't fix anything.

Looks like I'll just re-install but not format the partitions. Man, but I'd sure like to know what the heck I did, lol.

Using the 32bit install dvd for a 64bit system? I'm not surprised that didn't help.

I use this for chrooting into Slackware from a Live disk...

/(root) = /dev/sda4 with ext4 partition

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Much appreciated guys, but it got fixed with the install dvd.

The last time I tried by going the 'reconfigure' way, when it came to what I wanted to do with the lilo, I chose to 're-use' (or something like that...I'm bad tired and getting fuzzy-headed) the lilo that was there as I misinterpretted it to mean to use the old one but to 'fix' it and re-run lilo. It didn't...all that does is use what's there as lilo.conf and if it's messed up somehow, it just runs lilo.

This time I ran reconfigure again but chose to 'install' a new lilo and that apparently did the trick.

Thing is, looking at the lilo.conf from sda, I couldn't see anything wrong with it. Strange.

What difference would it make so long as I was root and chrooted into that system? Wouldn't it still be that I, as root, was in the 64bit system and doing what root is allowed to do? Just curious, because that's how I see what would be happening (though I could more than naturally be so far off it's not funny, heh). I mean, all the dvd did was give me a way to get *to* chroot to the place I needed to be, no?

chroot changes the root directory, "/"
it does not change the running kernel, that is 32bit

as for the problem
initrd could be missing, vmlinuz could be.. idk
could be you messed up the filesystem somehow, where fsck would (try) fix it

slackware is that way
you always have the comfort of knowing you probably messed up something

You said said you did run rc6 by clicking on it. To run rc6 you need to be root. Nothing more to say.

The 32-Bit install DVD has a 32 kernel. It cannot run the 64-Bit programs inside your chroot.

2 members found this post helpful.

Ah, okay, I took the GUI thing to mean I'd booted into the root desktop instead of meaning a root GUI like root krusader window. Meh, doesn't matter, like you've never made mistakes either. I unfortunately need these GUI apps because I can't remember well enough or enough commands to use a konsole. It was an accident and it was a relatively easy fix once I got my head around what the 'reconfigure' section of the installer meant when it came to the 'lilo' part.

Okay, I think I get it now. I had to think of it in an outside-the-box way.

So if I'd used a liveCD/dvd od *any* distro that has *any* kernel on it, so long as it's 64bit, I could have chrooted into sdb2 and done the lilo thing. Is this correct or am I off again?

@genss - During the kernel panic when it was trying to boot up going in with the stuff, I think I remember seeing something about 'pass something to init='. Does running lilo make a new initrd (I really don't know what running 'lilo' does after, say one has added 'lba32' to the lilo.conf file), or does it just tell the kernel about what's on the lilo.conf. Reason being, I only did the lilo configuring through the setup process of the install dvd.