Linux will not boot (LILO doesn't start)
 

I recently put Slackware 9.0 on an old Dell Pentium 133 with a single 1.5 GB hard drive, and the installation went without error. I split the hard drive into three partitions. The first (/dev/hda1) contains the kernel and is set to be bootable. The second(/dev/hda2) is set aside for /home, and the final partition (/dev/hda3) is a 128 MB swap file. My lilo.conf file in /etc/ includes the following:

boot = /dev/hda
vga = normal

image = /boot/vmlinuz
root = /dev/hda1
label = Slackware
read-only

The system will not boot on its own. I don't think LILO even starts, because the first 'L' character isn't even printed. My screen shows some BIOS information, then a blinking cursor, and then nothing else happens. If I disable booting from a floppy in the BIOS, then I get the message "No boot signature in partition". Luckily, I made boot disks during installation, and they allow me to boot Linux.

LILO is installed, and I did run the lilo command, as root, without error. It seems to be that I just don't have any partition set to active, but fdisk does indicate that /dev/hda1 is bootable. So, what do you think it could be? How can I get Linux to boot on its own?

Thanks

did you especify that you wanted lilo in the MBR?
if not, run liloconfig and do it

Well, I did do that, and still nothing. But I have a question related to that. Doesn't the line "boot = /dev/hda" in my lilo.conf indicate that I want it in the MBR? And then when I run lilo, shouldn't it then be installed in the MBR? Or does liloconfig do something additional?

Thanks

Maybe the BIOS is confused by having a bootloader in the MBR and a partition set as "active" - try taking away the "active" status of /dev/hda1 and let the BIOS find the bootloader in the MBR.

Thanks again, but that didn't work. I thought that the partition with the kernel had to be set to bootable?

I ran the command dd if=/dev/hda count=1 | strings | grep -i lilo .
A website that I was at indicated that the correct output should be

1+0 records in
1+0 records out
LILO

Instead, I get the following:
1+0 records in
1+0 records out
LILO
LILOu1^

What does that mean?

that doesnt mean nothing cause i get
1+0 records in
1+0 records out
LILO
üLILOu1^Í

and everythings ok with me

when you run liloconfig, and you do begin he will ask you if you want to use mbr, disk or superblock (not sure what this is). have you selected MBR, configurated and run LILO. it should work. it worked for me

You could always try

gedit /etc/lilo.conf

change the

boot=/dev/hda

to

boot=/dev/hda1

then run the map installer

/sbin/lilo

luxitan, I have tried liloconfig and it's just not working for me. But checking the MBR (with dd) shows that at least something related to LILO is being written there, even if it doesn't work.

Skyline, I tried what you recommended, and it doesn't work as well. Setting boot to hda1 would put it in the first partition (where the kernel is located), rather than the MBR, right? Then wouldn't I need some other bootloader in the MBR?

Something's seriously wrong here - it appears that LILO really is writing, and I have the correct configuration, right? Is there some other major step that I'm missing?

have you tried installing lilo using
/sbin/lilo
instead of liloconfig? maybe there's something wrong with liloconfig.

Has anything recently successfully booted off that hard drive, or could the first part of the disk be bad?

actually, just noticed that you did try running lilo. Maybe you could post your whole lilo.conf? Someone might see something wrong.

No - the BIOS would simply load the partition table, then find the active partition and load the boot sector of that partition - if LILO was installed via boot=/dev/hda1 then it would be loaded from the boot sector of that partition - Conversly - if LILO was installed in the MBR it would simply ignore the active partition but unfortunately there's still appears to be problems with this also - As Canon mentioned, has anything recently been booted from the MBR of that drive?

Hi all,

SpecialK, It seems that the problem has to do with your BIOS setting and your harddrive.
Old BIOSes sometimes hard to support or detect harddrive that is more than 1024 MB.
First, set your BIOS to its default setting, then boot your linux.
If that doesnt work, set your BIOS to detect your harddrive by auto mode and boot again.
If that doenst work as well, my last suggestion is to force LBA 32 during reinstallation

Hope this mean something......

I was having problems getting LILO to boot of my SCSI hd.. thats all i had was a seagate cheetah 9.1gb scsi and an IDE cd-rom... kept getting the L 99 99 (not even LI) ..after taking off the bootable of the partition that worked... why is that? using either mbr or superblock with the partition marked as bootable caused errors.

I really appreciate all of the help, and I think that the problem has been resolved (sort of).

In the BIOS I have three settings for the boot sequence: Diskette First, CD-ROM First, and Hard Disk Only. When this whole thing started, if I selected "Diskette First", then I would get nothing but a blinking cursor after the BIOS loaded. If I selected "Hard Disk Only", then I would get the message "No boot signature in partition." I guess somewhere along the way, with some combination of settings, I managed to correctly load LILO in to the MBR. But it still wouldn't work, until I decided to switch the Boot Sequence back to "Hard Disk Only" (I had it on Diskette First).

So now, Linux loads, but only under "Hard Disk Only" booting. Does anyone have an idea why?

Thanks again.

I updated the BIOS, and that took care of the problem. It's a Dell Dimension XPS P113c with BIOS version A05. Flashing it to A06 (the newest available) allowed me to set "Diskette First" and still boot from the hard drive.