[SOLVED] Fresh install and Lilo does this

plisken · 02-09-2024, 12:56 PM

I have installed Slackware more times that I care to remember and while I've in the past had issues with Lilo (not so much in recent years), this is the first I have seen this;
https://i.imgur.com/dhMdA3h.png

In case the image link doesnt work, this issue basically showing the basic and default lilo OS selection screen but there is garbage text scrolling for the duration of the timeout.

It does still boot and the strange thing, even after editing lilo.conf to change the timeout value, something I always do, it remains unchanged.

If I can upload a video I will.

Any thoughts on what might be causing this?

enorbet · 02-09-2024, 04:05 PM

There are several possibilities I can think of but first maybe try something. How easy it would be would depend on what you have for bootable media since I'm not certain all the Slackware install media still supports kernel options at the start that allow a user to indicate a different disk/partition. It used to be noted in print that one could type such as "huge.s root=/dev/foo2 rdinit = ro" and Bingo! Salvation! In any case if you have any media or install that allows for options, you could temporarily change the first active line of lilo.conf from the MBR to the Root partition, tun lilo and then put it back to MBR. Then you could easily determine if you had some sort of corruption in the MBR code.

Just so this isn't merely what could be an empty suggestion, the first thing I'd check is for any odd syntax in the lines calling the .bmp menu screen. It could also be useful to add a stanza to hand off to the root lilo as a chainload if you decide to experiment. Just spitballin'. Maybe this can stimulate some ideas.

glorsplitz · 02-09-2024, 07:56 PM

you don't indicate bare metal or virtual so check this out and this

chrisretusn · 02-09-2024, 10:35 PM

That look like it's from a VirtualBox virtual machine. Since I think 7.0. This was my fix.

Code:

# ------ menu -------
# Boot BMP Image.
# Bitmap in BMP format: 640x480x8
#bitmap=/boot/124827-slack.bmp
# Menu colors (foreground, background, shadow, highlighted
# foreground, highlighted background, highlighted shadow):
#bmp-colors=255,0,255,0,255,0
# Location of the option table: location x, location y, number of
# columns, lines per column (max 15), "spill" (this is how many
# entries must be in the first column before the next begins to
# be used.  We don't specify it here, as there's just one column.
#bmp-table=60,6,1,16
# Timer location x, timer location y, foreground color,
# background color, shadow color.
#bmp-timer=65,27,0,255

plisken · 02-10-2024, 04:05 AM

Thanks all, yes this was a Virtualbox install (to test something out before deploying in an industrial environment).

As I say, I've installed Slackware many, many times on both real and vm's but this is for sure the first time I've seen this and it might actually be the first install with virtual box 7.0

Thanks again all...