L 99 99 99 99 repeating lockup
 

All,

I finished my install of Slackware 10.2 on my laptop.

Everything seemed to go as planned... but when I rebooted the screen filled with something like this (see below) then locked up.

L 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 ... 99

This repeated for 254 characters then locked my system.

Any ideas what I could have done wrong?

Bob

99 == invalid second stage index sector

You need to reinstall Lilo. Do this by booting into the installation with the install cd with the command at boot screen: bare.i root=<insert /dev/hd**> noinitrd ro

Then when in the system (as root), just typing the command "lilo" will probably suffice, but you may have to reconfigure Lilo completely with the command liloconfig, or editing the file /etc/lilo.conf.

Good luck.

So what do I do with that?

I was able to put my install disk back in and at the boot: mount root=/dev/hda1

That got me going but how to I fix the "invalid second stage index sector" issue?

Bob

In my experience that is the error message comes up when a Lilo install doesn't take and is usually solved by a reinstall of Lilo. The "stage index sector" is probably part of the MBR where Lilo was installed.

Use the Slack install disk to boot, type pkgtool as root, reinstall lilo to the MBR then type lilo then reboot and that should do it. That same thing has happend to me several times.:eek:

I've gotten the same thing before, what fixed it for me was to install on root partition instead of MBR. or visaversa. Of course you would have to find a way to remove the bootloader fromt the mbr without messing up partition tables.

That worked... I used pkgtool to install LILO on MBR... the SETUP utility says installing on MBR can cause corruption, so I didn't take that option.

Thanks for he help.
Bob

Similar problem
 

Hey all, I have a similar issue. I have two drives that I swap back and forth as the boot/os drive and one of them now gives me the L 99 99 etc whenever I try to boot it by itself. HOWEVER, if the other drive is on the bus it boots fine?? Is there a way to run lilo but have it target the particular drive? For instance, lilo the hdb rather than the hda? When booted off of hda? I'm scared to lilo the hdb's lilo.conf for fear it will mess up the hda's lilo.

That make any sense??

Barnabos posted

" Hey all, I have a similar issue. I have two drives that I swap back and forth as the boot/os drive and one of them now gives me the L 99 99 etc whenever I try to boot it by itself. HOWEVER, if the other drive is on the bus it boots fine?? Is there a way to run lilo but have it target the particular drive? For instance, lilo the hdb rather than the hda? When booted off of hda? I'm scared to lilo the hdb's lilo.conf for fear it will mess up the hda's lilo.

That make any sense?? "

Do you mean you physically remove the drives and swap them? or you just reconfigure lilo?

well if you mean that you're going to use both disks constantly but just need a system (lilo) for changing which OS/HD you want to drive at boottime, oh yes i would say it's possible ;).

Just do a 'liloconfig', but, read the man_page first.
And if you are using MS_Os and want a dual boot be shure to place XP? as your primary hda ( C: )
(physically to - master hd - that is).
And yes, put lilo to your MBR when that question arises.
Still i'm not shure how you're setup ???

lilo details
 

Thanks so much for the replies.

These are both running linux. I want to have both drives on the bus or be able to take one off. What I do is keep all data on a SCSI Raid array and then use the IDEs (hda/b) to do upgrades to Linux, Apache, PHP etc. This lets me have an easy and safe rollback environment without having to "uninstall" anything.

I'm thinking that I must not have run lilo but only changed the lilo config so most likely hdb is still looking for hda in some fashion and when the drive isn't there problems arise.

Or, your HDD could be borked. http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/showthread.php?s=&postid=1624190#post1624190"]
:p