Running lilo from a boot disk

id10t · 02-05-2004, 08:55 PM

EDIT: Problem solved (see last post)

OK this stems from a lot of issues but I think I am finally at the end. This is taken from a previous post because I thought it deserved it own.

OK So I am currently booting off of the slackware live CD. So I mount my root partition, I edit lilo as I need to. But the problem is that I can't run lilo to update the changes. here is what i have tried.

Code:

./lilo (in /<mounted root>/sbin)
Fatal: Can't find /etc/lilo.conf
./lilo -C /<mounted root>/etc/lilo.conf 
Fatal: creat /boot/boot.0810 No such file or directory

I figured that booting from a boot disk to fix lilo and reboot would be common thing to do so I thought it would be pretty simple.

Quote:

OK booting of a boot disk... followed your instrution... Got the driver in and the harddrive mounted to /sda I made sure I made all of the changes to the hard drive on /sda and not my boot disk.

The problem is when I get to the end. I am trying to run lilo. so I cd to /sda/sbin/ and type
./lilo
and it can't find the lilo.conf. No problem:
./lilo -C /sda/etc/lilo.conf
then I get
"Fatal: creat /boot/boot.0810 No such file or directory"

Is there another switch for lilo that I need to throw in there?...

vectordrake · 02-05-2004, 09:29 PM

When you change your /etc/lilo/conf on your hard drive, you have to run lilo from the hard drive too. I think that when you have been working, you have actually been using the tools on the boot disk. When you want to edit anything on the hard drive without chroot-ing in to the HD, you have to specify the full path to the file and to the tools you are using. If you want to edit /etc/lilo.conf on your hard drive, you'll have to edit that copy, as your copy on the cdrom won't be edited. Ex: open your editor (I'll use nano as an example, as a lot of distros have it by default and its easy to use):

Pretend your mount point for the HD is /mnt/hda1.

nano -w /mnt/hda1/etc/lilo.conf

edit the file. save it to the place you got it from (as in /mnt/hda1/etc/lilo.conf)

then, run lilo.

/mnt/hda1/sbin/lilo

You should be successful.

Good luck

id10t · 02-05-2004, 10:18 PM

That is exactly what I did...

Sorry... maybe I should have been more clear.

synaptical · 02-05-2004, 10:33 PM

you should be able to run lilo as root. just the command works:

# lilo

could you post your lilo.conf file and partition information?

id10t · 02-05-2004, 11:07 PM

OK look... I can't run lilo as root by just typing "lilo" in the console because I am booting of a minimal boot disk.

The only way I can run it is to manually mount my hard drive and go to the directory which it is in. Because lilo naturally tried to find it's config file in /etc/lilo.conf, I had to use the -C switch so that I could point to to where the lilo.conf was actually located.
(Root partition [/dev/sda1] mounted in folder /sda)

Code:

<root@localhost>#/sda/sbin/lilo -C /sda/etc/lilo.conf

Lilo runs... It just errors out because it is using the / directory as it's root instead of /sda/ which is it's root. All I want to know is how to change a setting or something so that it will recognise /dev/sda1 as being the root directory.

synaptical · 02-05-2004, 11:22 PM

unless i'm misunderstanding you from only getting part of the picture (you mentioned some other thread, so i'm a little unclear on if there is more to the problem), you should be able to boot your system from the slackware disk by entering the right boot parameters at the prompt:

bare.i root=/dev/sda1 noinitrd ro

unless it's some weird scsi issue with your /sda that won't let you ? (or maybe it takes a kernel image other than bare.i). then just run lilo when you're in your system, and not just the cd/disk environment. like i said, i might be misunderstanding your problem, but it seems to me that should work as long as your root system is "viable," so to speak.

id10t · 02-05-2004, 11:47 PM

I can't boot into my system without first leading a driver for my SATA drives. That si why i have to first boot to the Slackware CD then load the drivers before I can mount the hd partition.

I mean is there something I can do in the boot parameters that would let me insmod this driver?

gnashley · 02-06-2004, 03:59 AM

In order to install lilo, after editing /mnt/???/etc/lilo.conf, you need to
chroot /mnt/???
This changes the root device. When you boot from the CD the root device is ramdisk RAM0. if you try to run lilo from there you get those errors. So you must first change root to wherever you have your root partition mounted.
But if you are booting from hardware whose support is not compiled into any of the Slackware kernels you'll have to make a custom syslinx bootdisk

vectordrake · 02-06-2004, 08:12 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by gnashley
In order to install lilo, after editing /mnt/???/etc/lilo.conf, you need to
chroot /mnt/???

That was my first premonition, but I thought he'd be able to get in without. Oops.

Try the install instructions for Slack or any of the 'from scratch' distros like LFS or Gentoo. The docs are good and you have to chroot regardless when you install. They'll have a clear way of explaining it (I have seen it on the Gentoo pages under 'installing the system')

gnashley · 02-07-2004, 03:31 AM

I can't find my notes on it right now, but you have to unmount /proc, then chroot, then remount /proc.

id10t · 02-08-2004, 12:22 AM

I found the flag for lilo.

Code:

/<mounted HD>/sbin/lilo -r /<mounted HD/

That tells lilo where root should be.

I had someone on #slackware at irc.freenode.org run a "man lilo" for me.