Author: Steve Borho
Email: steve@meridian.com
Web Page: http://www.meridian.com
Date Submitted: Wed, Apr 29, 1998
Status: New Entry
Requester: nate
Email: nmalcho@globalbiz.net
Web Page: http://www.
Request Made: Mon, Feb 2, 1998
Releases: | all |
Platform: | Intel |
Category: | Booting & LILO |
Category Listing: | It wont boot it just comes up with LI and stops |
I try to boot linux and all I get is LI and a lot of beeping or just LI.
The problem is that for whatever reason LILO cannot find your kernel. It is usually caused by recompiling the kernel and copying the new one over the old and forgetting to re-run lilo. Remember, the program /sbin/lilo is not what actually boots your computer. /sbin/lilo mearly reads /etc/lilo.conf and writes a new boot sector onto your drive. Every time your kernel moves on your hard-drive, you need to rerun lilo to update that boot sector. If you forgot, and you get the dreaded "LI..." lockup, you must boot with the RedHat install/rescue floppy and mount the root directory and re-run lilo using a command like "lilo -r /mnt". To avoid this problem, and the eventual MBR corruption that occurs when installing a Microsoft operating system, you should make an emergency LILO boot floppy for every machine you dual-boot. Simply insert an unused floppy into drive A: and run (as root) lilo -b /dev/fd0. This will make an exact copy of your hard-drive boot sector onto that floppy so that the next time something kills your boot record, just insert that floppy and boot from it. When you get your login prompt again, just login as root and run lilo to recreate a valid master boot record on the hard-drive.
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