Hi, I need some help right away. I can't boot my system !
I was trying to install a new kernel. I made the kernel image, copied it to de /boot directory, edited the /etc/lilo.conf file and ran lilo. Now, I can't boot my system. When I turn on the comuter all I see is LIL-. Now I have looked at some help pages and here is what turned up.

* LIL-

The descriptor table is corrupt. This can either be caused by a geometry mismatch or by moving /boot/map without running the map installer.

Yes, good, but what should I do ?

I tried running lilo again. I tried removing the entry to my new kernel in lilo.conf. I tried removing lilo and installing it again. I checked I lilo was under the 1024 cylinder line, which it was (I did fdisk -l and saw that the boot parition was under 1024). What I did manage to do is install lilo on a floppy disk. This worked and I can boot the system with this floppy disk.
I need some help right away. Please some out there, help me !!

Hey there killer, did you replace your old kernel?

Also, you might not have copied the System.map file over, but I doubt that would hang you at lilo.

If you didn't replace the old kernel, just edit lilo to reflect the old kernel, and rerun lilo.

Also, post your lilo.conf and the contents of /boot

What I did was I changed the name of my old kernel from vmlinuz to vmlinuz_backup and told lilo to boot this image.
I did'nt do any thing with the system.map file, should I have ?

Ok, here is every thing:

lilo.conf :

boot = /dev/hda4
vga = 788
read-only
menu-scheme = Wg:kw:Wg:Wg
lba32
prompt
timeout = 80
message = /boot/message

image = /boot/vmlinuz_backup
label = linux_old
root = /dev/hda4
initrd = /boot/initrd
append = "enableapic vga=0x0314 hdd=ide-scsi"


image = /boot/vmlinuz.suse
label = failsafe
root = /dev/hda4
initrd = /boot/initrd.suse
append = "disableapic ide=nodma apm=off"
optional

other = /dev/hda1
label = windows

image = /boot/memtest.bin
label = memtest86

Here is my boot directory:

.
..
.journal
System.map-2.4.10-4GB
boot-menu.b
boot-text.b
boot.0200
boot.0300
boot.0302
boot.0304
boot.b
chain.b
initrd
initrd.suse
lilo.log
lilo.logerr
lost+found
map
map2
memtest.bin
message
os2_d.b
vmlinuz
vmlinuz.autoconf.h
vmlinuz.config
vmlinuz.suse
vmlinuz.version.h
vmlinuz_backup

Ok so I am confused...

Thanks for the edit tricky

You didn't build a new kernel then, but just renamed your old one and changed the entry in lilo, reran lilo, and rebooted? Was this just to test things? Or am I missing something?

Well, I searched the forms and I did find some people having the same problem. Only the thing is that the forms don't realy give me a solution to my problem. The tell me to do stuff I already tied or the come up with solutions I can't live with. I don't want to re-install my system and I don't want to use a nother boot loader. Please help me

Ok sorry for not being clear. I did build a new kernel. The new kernel image's name is vmlinuz. But just in case something would go wrong, I backed-up my existing kernel and changed it's name to vmlinuz_backup. So I have two kernel images, vmlinuz, which is my new (2.4.19) kernel and vmlinuz_backup, which is my old kernel (2.4.10). At fist I edited lilo.conf so that I could chose between kernels. But when booting faild I tried to re-edit the lilo.conf file so that it only told to boot the old kernel image. But this did'nt work.
I hope I'm being clear now.

Yes, I can see the picture better now, thanks. But now I am confused, when you run /sbin/lilo -v what does it return? If it exists without errors, I am thinking that you should be good to go???

Hello there again.
I did'nt run lilo with the -v option. Should I have ?
Anyway, a few things have happed since yesterday. I first, I did something amazingly stupid. I had a boot floppy with lilo on the mbr, right. So I thought, what if I would copy the mbr of the floppy to the mbr of my hard drive. The only thing was I had to copy only a certain amount of bytes to the HD. If I would copy to much, I would scru up the partition table.
Guess what dumb ass here did .... Accecly . So I ended up with a HD that was totaly unreadeble. I spent the rest of the day restoring my system.
Anyway, I still want to install the new kernel. Only I'm very afraigd to do that now. I don't know what went wrong with lilo and i'm afraigd the same thing would happen agian. Could you help me figure out wat could have gotten wrong.

By the way, running /sbin/lilo did'nt give any errors. You asked with the -v option. But I can't tell any more

Cool, no -v just gives verbose output, maybe pointing you towards a possible warning, but no error.

Anyway, don't be afraid. The first 10 times I tried to build a kernel, I dorked my system, then one day I realized that I shouldn't be copying over the old kernel

Anyway, yeah. Follow the kernel building how-to and don't be afraid of screwing things up again, it's half the fun/learning. Just make sure you have essentials backed up.

That really sucks that you wiped your drive

Good Luck, and if you have questions about kernel building, search on here. And if you don't find an adequate answer, or something isn't explained well, ask. I'd be happy to help you on that, as would many others I am sure

Cool

A advise to any one wanting to restore his/her mbr via a boot floppy. DON'T ever do

"dd if=/dev/fd0 of=/dev/hda"