patch kernel question
 

This question really is a mute point only because it must be done anyway...
I am about to apply the kernel fix for suse 8.0 2.4.18 and am curious if I should expect any problems with apps currently installed, mainly apache and qmail? I am guessing these apps don't care about the fix but if something might happen it would be good to know in advance. Thanks

eeeeerrrrrrrr the horror... i used kpackage to install the kernel rpm, rebooted and got the EBDA too large error. I did some digging and it seems that it is related to lilo somehow. I was able to boot to failsafe, which I did and used YAST to restore the original lilo configuration. Reboot, and now I am receving the following: LILO Descriptor Checksum Error.

Any suggestions? Thanks

I have dusted off my suse 8.0 cd's and am able to boot to rescue mode. However, when I try and reinstall lilo (/sbin/lilo) it tells me there is not lilo.conf. I check /etc/ and there is no lilo.conf. Do I have to recreate lilo.conf? If so does anyone have a suse 8.0 lilo.conf? Or any other suggestions?

Normally in rescue mode your / root is ramdisk and your linux partitions are mounted somewhere else. For example in Mandrake Rescue mode my linux / partition is mounted at /mnt, so if I want to run lilo I have to point lilo to /mnt like this:
lilo -r /mnt
If you want to find out where the partitions are just type mount.

Funny thing is when I log into rescue mode it puts in /root if I mount i get:

/dev/root on / type ext2 (rw)
proc on /proc type proc (rw)
devpts on /dev/pts type devpts (rw)
shmfs on /dev/shmfs type shm (rw)

any suggestion? :scratch:

I'm not sure what /dev/root actually is. It may be the root device for the kernel on the CD. To be sure you are dealing with the correct / partition I suggest you mount it yourself. Do you know which partition has / on it? Type fdisk -l /dev/hda and it will list your partitions. Then you can mount your root partition like this:

mkdir /hd
mount /dev/<root partition> /hd #Replace <root partition> with the correct device.
cat /hd/etc/lilo.conf #Look over lilo.conf to see if everything is OK.
lilo -r /hd

I feel like I am gaining on it... after following above i now have only LI and nothing more. However after mounting /hd there was no lilo.conf. I ran lilo -r /hd and it appeared to create the lilo.conf I rebooted and it stuck at LI. I booted back into rescue mode and checked the lilo.conf and it appeared to the be lilo.conf from 2 days ago. Any other suggestions? Thanks again for the help.

LI usually means you need to add lba32 to your lilo.conf file. You should put it in the global section of lilo.conf. The global section is at the top of the file before the first image= statement.

Here is where i am now. I have a lilo.conf and lilo.conf.bak both in /hd/etc

both are listed below. I added the lba32 to the lilo.conf I still get LI - if I rename the lilo.conf.bak to lilo.conf and boot I still get the LI Any Suggestions? Thanks

Lilo.conf
lba32
boot = /dev/hda1
change-rules
reset
read-only
menu-scheme = Wg:kw:Wg:Wg
prompt
timeout = 80
message = /boot/message

image = /boot/vmlinuz
label = linux
append = "ide=nodma apm=off acpi=off"
initrd = /boot/initrd
root = /dev/hda1

image = /boot/vmlinuz.suse
label = failsafe
append = "ide=nodma apm=off acpi=off ide=nodma apm=off acpi=off"
initrd = /boot/initrd.suse
optional
root = /dev/hda1

image = /boot/memtest.bin
label = memtest86


Lilo.conf.bak
boot = /dev/hda
change-rules
reset
read-only
menu-scheme = Wg:kw:Wg:Wg
lba32
prompt
timeout = 80
message = /boot/message

image = /boot/vmlinuz
label = linux
root = /dev/hda1
vga = 791
initrd = /boot/initrd

image = /boot/vmlinuz.suse
label = failsafe
root = /dev/hda1
vga = 791
initrd = /boot/initrd.suse
append = "ide=nodma apm=off acpi=off"
optional

image = /boot/memtest.bin
label = memtest86

:confused:

Those two lilo.conf files are nearly the same except on the first you are installing lilo on hda1 bootsector, and on the second one lilo is installed on MBR.

Try running fdisk /dev/hda and make sure /dev/hda1 is toggled to bootable.

Another thing to check is weather failsafe will boot or does memtest86 work?

<edit> Now that I look closer the first lilo.conf will do nothing because lilo is already on the MBR so it never looks at bootsector of hda1. You need to change the first lilo.conf to read boot=/dev/hda like the other lilo.conf.

Same thing :mad:

/bash you should do the affero thing, I will contribute to you for all your help.


below is lilo.conf

lba32
boot = /dev/hda
change-rules
reset
read-only
menu-scheme = Wg:kw:Wg:Wg
prompt
timeout = 80
message = /boot/message

image = /boot/vmlinuz
label = linux
append = "ide=nodma apm=off acpi=off"
initrd = /boot/initrd
root = /dev/hda1

image = /boot/vmlinuz.suse
label = failsafe
append = "ide=nodma apm=off acpi=off ide=nodma apm=off acpi=off"
initrd = /boot/initrd.suse
optional
root = /dev/hda1

image = /boot/memtest.bin
label = memtest86

You need to look at contents of /hd/boot directory.

ls -l /hd/boot

See if the symlink points to correct kernel. Make sure the kernel is a reasonalbe size e.g. 600k to 2M and not something rediculous like 10K.

Also what about booting memtest86 or failsafe?

Thanks for the comment zuessh. I was in a hurry posting before, I was getting ready for work and still had to scrape ice & snow off my car.

Here's my LinuxQuestions philosophy:
If you're not getting paid then you must be doing this for fun. If it's no longer fun then whats the point?

I checked the contents of /hd/boot and the only link is boot.b that points to boot-menu.b

None of the files in /hd/boot were small in size (except the link).

I again ran fdisk -l /dev/hda and it listed /dev/hda1 as linux and was marked boot.

I also tried something that may not mean anything but I renamed /hd/etc/lilo.conf to /hd/etc/lilo and rebooted. It stopped at LI, could this mean that i am looking at the wrong lilo.conf?

If you want to make sure you are changing the correct lilo.conf just change one of the entries label= to something else, save it run lilo and reboot. If the label changes then you know thats the correct lilo.conf file.

What type of filesystem do you have the / partition formatted as? The reason I ask is it may be that the kernel does not have built-in support and the initrd file might not either.