LinuxQuestions.org - Unable to determine video adapter

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Unable to determine video adapter

Code:

LILO version 22.8 (test mode), Copyright (C) 1992-1998 Werner Almesberger

Development beyond version 21 Copyright (C) 1999-2006 John Coffman

Released 19-Feb-2007 and compiled at 20:09:28 on Feb 14 2010



Reading boot sector from /dev/sda

Warning: Unable to determine video adapter in use in the present system.

Using BITMAP secondary loader

Calling map_insert_data

Mapping bitmap file /boot/slack.bmp

Warning: Video adapter does not support VESA BIOS extensions needed for

  display of 256 colors.  Boot loader will fall back to TEXT only operation.

Calling map_insert_file



Boot other: /dev/sda1, on /dev/sda, loader CHAIN

Added Windows *



Boot image: /boot/vmlinuz

Added Linux



Boot image: /boot/vmlinuz.old2

Added old



The boot sector and the map file have *NOT* been altered.

2 warnings were issued.

I don't know what to do? My lilo.conf is pretty much default. I have to use my USB drive to boot slackware, as I get a kernel panic trying to boot either my new kernel or the default kernel. I haven't installed my video drivers, but it wouldn't make sense to need to have the proprietary nvidia drivers installed in order to boot linux. It was working fine before I compiled my kernel.

As far as I can tell, those are just relatively harmless warnings tell you that the lilo bootloader is going to use text only mode. I see no indication that lilo failed to install.

Adam

But linux won't boot ...

What is the exact error message issued by the kernel panic? Is it something like "Attempted to kill init. Unable to mount root partition on unknown block 0,0"?

If that is the case then that is (almost) always due to the kernel being unable to mount the root partition. That is because the kernel doesn't have the driver (module) for that particular file system built into it.

The file system driver for the root partition MUST be built into the kernel. You cannot load it as a module.

Quote:

Originally Posted by stress_junkie (Post 4166345)

The file system driver for the root partition MUST be built into the kernel. You cannot load it as a module.

Unless you use an initial ramdisk (initrd).

Hi. Just a few minutes I have (I think) the same problem. In google, the solution I found was to check the BIOS load order. I hope it helps to you as it did for me.

I dont know how it works for me. Anybody knows?