LILO can't install properly on HP Probook

galapogos · 06-14-2011, 02:55 AM

Hi,

I have a SATA boot disk with LILO installed. This disk is kinda like a recovery disk in that its supposed to boot up on any x86 PC. I'm however having trouble getting it to boot on a HP Probook laptop. I get the LILO 99 99 99 ... problem upon bootup.

I've already specified the linear option in my lilo.conf, which according to the LILO error codes might fix the problem but didn't.

Quote:

0x99: Invalid Second Stage
Mismatch between drive and BIOS geometry, or a bad map file. Some evidence that LINEAR needs to be set on the disk (see LiloNotes)

I've tried specifying the lba32 option instead, but get the same problem.

I've tried the solutions at this LILO Error Codes wiki, i.e.
lilo -g
and
lilo -M /dev/sda

Neither solution worked.

Does anyone know how to get this working? Or recommend another BIOS independent boot loader? I was using nuni in the past for my IDE version, but nuni doesn't support SATA drives.

fyi I'm booting up the disk and running LILO on another laptop that boots it up, before plugging it into the Probook to test.

Thanks!

Peacedog · 06-14-2011, 08:57 PM

Hi galapogos, How are you plugging the drive into the laptop? Are you plugging directly into the SATA connector or is it usb, etc.? Could it be /dev/sdb instead of /dev/sda?

Good luck. ;-)

jefro · 06-14-2011, 09:06 PM

Chain it from grub? I am suspecting lilo is not able to support the devices. I haven't used lilo in like 10 years.

galapogos · 06-14-2011, 10:24 PM

@Peacedog, I'm plugging direct to SATA, and since its the only SATA device in the laptop, I'm pretty sure it's /dev/sda.

@jefro, the main reason I'm sticking with LILO is its simplicity. AFAIK grub is a fair bit more complicated and still depends on the BIOS(hence would probably give no compatibility advantage), and this being a recovery disk needs to be as simple as possible and boot up in ideally 100% of PCs out there.

Are there any other suitable BIOS independent boot loaders out there that would work with the widest range of hardware? I used to use nuni, which is BIOS independent, but that only supports IDE drives.

galapogos · 06-15-2011, 02:39 AM

Is there any way of using Knoppix to reinstall LILO?

I've tried booting up in the HP Probook with Knoppix 6, then mounting the drive, then chrooting to it, then running lilo

Code:

mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/sda1
chroot /mnt/sda1
lilo

However, despite no warnings, upon reboot nothing seems to have changed.

honeybadger · 06-15-2011, 03:45 AM

AFAIK that should throw a _lot_ of errors like sytem map inconsistency and then the fact that /dev would be empty.
Since you can chroot - this is what I would advice - use your package manager to reinstall lilo. Worked for me once when I was using slackware.
If you get the option to install lilo to root partition rather than /dev/sda that too would be a good idea. Check and see if there is an expert option to reinstall lilo.
Hope this helps.