KDE and LILO
 

I'm very new to Debian. I've experienced this issue twice but I don't see any threads about it. I typically use window maker but I wanted to install KDE for the apps. I'm using synaptic to install kde. All is well until I reboot. When the machine starts, LILO hangs at "LI". I've tried booting to knoppix, mounting the system partition, and then using lilo from the command line to re-write the mbr but I get a read only error. Does anyone know what might be happening here and how I can fix this issue? Thanks

Edit the file /etc/lilo.conf in the line install="Something" Change "Something" for "boot.b", that should work...

and post an "ok, it worked" or an "oh, no I still have the problem" so if you succeed sbdy else will be happy :D

Update
 

Thanks for the reply _DecodeX_. I had to tell lilo to use a the lilo.conf on my debian system partition rather than the default /etc/lilo as this was the conf file for the knoppix system I had running. There was also a switch to have the backup boot.b dumped to another location. These allowed lilo to write the mbr, but I still could not boot afterward. I took a look at my boot partition and was shocked to find about 5 different kernels and even an old grub directory from my previous redhat system. I thought I had formatted these partitions when in fact I had not. Doh! So I formatted everything, reinstalled debian and x, and the kde install went fine. I still don't know why the kde install had an effect on the mbr but I'm not really surprised given the mess in my boot partition. I had already done all of this before I saw your reply _DecodeX_. However, I will file this into my notes for next time I have an mbr issue. Thanks again for the reply.

If you use the chroot command to "enter" your Debian system (after first mounting *all* the Debian partitions that are necessary such as /usr, /home and possibly mount the proc filesystem using the bind option in your mount command eg: mount -o bind /proc /mnt/debian/proc) before running LILO will force LILO to use the correct conf file (as you'll be running the version of LILO from your Debian install and its lilo.conf will be the only one it can "see") and prevent the error from appearing. I use chroot all the time to work on my various installed Linux distro's without leaving the comfort of my main Gentoo install. I even had to use it to get out of the mess the Debian netinstaller left me in when it failed to set LILO up properly when I used it on my router box. It's a very useful command to get to know.