reboot after LILO says 'Loading slackware..... bios check complete' - over and over

hello

I have a computer with a 250gb HDD (Win7) and a 1TB (slackware current). I had LILO installed on the slack drive itself and it all worked fine.

I would just press F8 to bring up the boot menu every time I turned the computer on, and pick the drive with slackware. LILO would pop up, I'd press enter, and it would boot up and everything worked totally fine.

Yesterday I added a 3rd drive, 64gb SSD, and installed Arch on it to mess around. I installed the refind bootloader, had some issues, then the grub bootloader, still didn't work, so I just deleted everything on that drive and decided to try again later.

But now, when I press F8 and select my slack drive, the computer just moves on to the next drive (or reboots if I disable all other drives) after selecting 'Slackware' in LILO.

Any tips on how to begin troubleshooting/figuring this out would be greatly appreciated. Just want my slack back

Oh I did reinstall slack using the same options I did the first time, same problem persists.

I'm wondering if my installing Arch on a 3rd drive messed something up with the bootloading situation?

I would say at a guess that LILO has lost contact with your Slackware kernel and/or initrd. Did you do anything at all to that drive while you were playing about with other bootloaders?

The first thing I would do with any kind of misbehaviour by LILO would be to run /sbin/lilo, first in test mode and then in earnest. It never does any harm. I assume you have some kind of rescue device that you can boot and run from.

Just for interest, what else do you have on that LILO menu? If there are any other options besides Slackware, do they work?

I suspect the drive order changed when the third drive was installed. Are you able to boot the slackware partition from the slackware install medium? If so rerun lilo.

Originally Posted by hazel I would say at a guess that LILO has lost contact with your Slackware kernel and/or initrd. Did you do anything at all to that drive while you were playing about with other bootloaders?

As far as I know I nothing should have cross-contaminated the drives. I put everything on separate drives specifically to keep things as separate as possible. I could be wrong.

Originally Posted by hazel The first thing I would do with any kind of misbehaviour by LILO would be to run /sbin/lilo, first in test mode and then in earnest. It never does any harm. I assume you have some kind of rescue device that you can boot and run from.

I do not have a rescue USB. This was just a fresh install (initially working fine before adding 3rd drive) for me to play around with some stuff - nothing important, so I didn't make a USB.

Originally Posted by hazel Just for interest, what else do you have on that LILO menu? If there are any other options besides Slackware, do they work?

Nothing, I chose to install the bootloader on the slackware driver itself so that everything is completely separate.

Originally Posted by colorpurple21859 I suspect the drive order changed when the third drive was installed. Are you able to boot the slackware partition from the slackware install medium? If so rerun lilo.

When I run the slackware install USB again, and select to reconfigure the system, nothing happens. The menu option just jumps back to the top.

Have to move away from the computer but will continue testing soon...

in setup select target, no format to remount the slackware partitions, skip/cancel source, configure your system.

Originally Posted by colorpurple21859 in setup select target, no format to remount the slackware partitions, skip/cancel source, configure your system.

Oooh, good trick to know. That worked (to get into Configure).

So I configured LILO again using both auto and manual. Problem still persists.

One notable clue that I came across, though, was that I specifically chose the name "SlackwareX" for what appears on the LILO screen.

But when LILO boots up it just says "Slackware".

This is really weird.

What happens when you select one the other disk to boot from?

Originally Posted by colorpurple21859 What happens when you select one the other disk to boot from?

When I select the disk my Win7 install is on, it loads up fine. This is via either just turning the computer on or F8 on boot and selecting it manually.

The windows machine isn't in the LILO config on the Slack HDD.

edit: windows HDD, not machine. brain fart.

What happens when you select the new drive?

I disconnected all the drives except the Slackware drive.

Just reboots over and over again after the LILO screen.

What really seems to be the key is the fact that when I configure LILO during setup from the USB, it doesn't appear to be actually writing anything. Like if I change the LILO boot name to "blah" it will end up being "Slackware" no matter what I do.

Going to try one more fresh install from the beginning.

Ok so I fixed it. I guess?

I unplugged all drives except the one intended for Slackware.

This time during installation I selected MBR instead of Root for the LILO install location.

Slackware now boots up fine, and I am pretty sure that when I plug my Windows drive back in and use F8, either will boot fine... just have to test that next.

This time during installation I selected MBR instead of Root for the LILO install location

I suspect the selecting of root instead of mbr was the problem.