RocketRAID 454 + RedHat 8 = /etc/lilo.conf ignored
 

Installed a HighPoint RocketRAID 454 controller.
Installed Device Drivers for said controller.
Used fdisk to force sba (?) to be an 'fd' type (RAID) drive.
Installed RedHat 8

Life is good, except...

The DEFAULT boot image is 'linux' which is an SMP image, and this ain't an SMP box. It freezes up after doing something with the floppy fairly early in the boot process.

The 'linux-up' image works great, though, so that would be fine, if we could just get that 'linux-up' image to be the default.

Alas, altering /etc/lilo.conf has NO EFFECT.

There are no images in /boot
There is no map in /boot
There ain't much of anything in /boot

There is only kernel.h in /boot

I BELIEVE that the RocketRAID device drivers and redhat have conspired to use initrd -- creating a temporary RAM disk to boot-strap a LILO boot, to load the RocketRAID drivers, and then to continue with the "real" boot.

If true, then the lilo.conf file I want to edit is buried in some initrd RAM-disk image file somewhere.

Probably the /dev/initrd file which is sitting there in /dev.

Hey, I'm guessing here, okay?

So what I THINK I want to ask is:

"How to I mount/edit/save/unmount the /dev/initrd device so I can edit the /etc/lilo.conf file that is actually coming into play."

I tried things like:

mkdir /mnt/initrd
mount -o loop /dev/initrd /mnt/initrd

and variations on that theme, but not successfully.

DISCLAIMER:
It's entirely possible I have NO CLUE as to what is really going on in the boot sequence. All I know for sure is that editing /etc/lilo.conf the "normal" way had no effect.

I really don't understand all this crap. I'm just a software guy trying to follow whack instructions. :-)

THANKS!

PS
I also screwed up and:
A) Created my swap partitions on the RAID, I think.
B) Didn't partition things right...
We're talking RAID 5.
There are 3 80-Gig drives.
One of them is used as a 'parity copy'
I tried to create a ~160 Gig partition, and it wouldn't let me.
So I made an ~80 Gig partition, the largest it would let me do.
I think I now have about 80 Gig unallocated...
Any way to allocate that without re-installing?...

Having everything missing from /boot is a bit upsetting, what's your /etc/fstab look like? Also, did you have a /boot partition that is off orphaned somewhere? Somehow either your /boot partition got blanked, or never gets mounted, which is the only thing that makes sense as your kernel images have obviously survived if you can boot them and they're usually located in /boot.

Cheers,

Finegan