Hello good people,

Straight down to the point;

Are (...was) running a Slackware (kernel 2.4.29) installation as a webserver.
The server worked just fine, until today when I - in addition to the existing NIC (PCI, 3c905C) - tried to install another NIC (ISA, 3c509B) in order to use the server as a firewall/router.

Fairly simple I thought ..yea right….

First the LILO fails to boot, showing a never ending stream of 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99..

Booted up from Slackware installation cd 1, starter my server manually using “bare.i root=/dev/hda1 noinitrd ro”, system booted up fine except of some errors in the boot-up-lines where modprobe complains:
Can't open dependencies file /lib/modules/2.4.29/modules.dep (No such file or directory)

Still, removing the new card will result in a successful boot, as it was the only obvious fail source added recently..
Nope, lilo again start with its 99 99 99 99 streamline.

Anybody have an idea what's wrong?? Suggestion??


. muusle

when you booted up with the slackware cd were you able to mount and examine the HDD?

Yup, everything worked fine, accept the network.

Btw:
ifconfig shows only the local interface.
/sbin/lspci shows the presence of the Ethernet controller

. muusle

what kindof drive do you have? is it a sata drive? do you need to load a module to get it to run? what did you do to try to load the new card? did you change any config files? what does dmesg look like when you boot up with the disk?

- its a IDE drive
- nope, no modules needed

Essentially; the system failed to boot on the first run with the new nic. I haven’t change anything on the “soft side” of the system.

I would reseat cards and make sure cables are reset. looks like it is probably hardware related.

So it seems.

Although, after resetting, whit or whit out NIC, the same happens, the L 99 99 99 99 stramline on normal boot and network fails when I boot the system from boot cd.


Some debug from the boot-up :

The "99 99 99 99 ... " is a symptom I've seen when the boot block for the linux system has not been updated to reflect changes in the location of the kernel file. If you recompiled the kernel, moved the kernel boot file, or updated something with the boot loader, make sure you did that correctly. If you're using LILO, make sure the lilo.conf file is correct, and has the correct information for the "boot = " and "image =" statements.

Some other things to watch out for when installing new hardware are changes the BIOS might make, causing interrupt or I/O port conflicts with existing devices. Make sure your BIOS hasn't changed the addressing mode of the disk from LBA to Track/Sector mode or incorrectly identified the size of the disk.

Since you said removing the NIC doesn't solve the problem, it is possible something has written over the boot block.
What I suggest, is verify that "/etc/lilo.conf" is correct, and then use the "lilo" command to rewrite the boot block.
If you happen to be doing anything unusual, like booting from Windows using the "BOOTSECT.LNX" file, make sure that file is up to date, and matches the boot block for the Linux partition.

Hey,

Thanks for the suggestions, got some good clues!

The following steps got the system up and running:

- Boot up with "bare.i root=/dev/hda1 noinitrd ro" with slack cd 1
- pico /etc/lilo.conf
- change this:
...to this:
- Then after saving (CTRL + O to save CTRL + X to exit pico)
- Then type lilo -v
- Reboot
- System boots up!

Link to solution (www.slackwarehelp.org)

. muusle