Re: [LINUX/ TECH PROBLEM] Can't get this *** to boot....

From: Bill Marcum (bmarcum_at_iglou.com.urgent)
Date: 10/13/04 

Date: Wed, 13 Oct 2004 15:12:57 -0400

["Followup-To:" header set to comp.os.linux.hardware.]
On Wed, 13 Oct 2004 18:51:51 +0200, SilliCone
  <noone@nowhere.net> wrote:
>
> [crosspostet because of increasing frustation]
>
> There are days i just hate...
>
> Looked like a quick'n easy- set up old P1-133 with slackware9.1, cli only.
> Usually a thing of mere minutes (not counting installation process itself)
> if nothing goes wrong. Yes, if.
>
> Problem:
>
> System is installed, runs fine as far as i can tell after 5 days without
> doing actual work with it.
> But- Lilo doesn't seem to work, or the bios doesn't seem to work as has to
> be expecetd, or what the *** ever.
>
> I installed lilo as i do it always in the mbr of the first (and in this case
> only) harddisk. No error reportings, all looks clear. But after POST i only
> get "Insert bootable media in the aprobiate drive" That's it, nothing more.

That looks like a BIOS error message. Some BIOSes have "virus
protection" which prevents writing to the MBR. You should turn that off
when installing an operating system.

> Re-installed lilo some times with the same result (and yes, i double-
> triple- and whatever checked the lilo.conf *g*).
> Used the superblock for my next tries, same result. One small difference- i
> get the same "Insert bootable media in the aprobiate drive", but after 2 or
> 3 retries i get "Li 99 99 99 99l" Somewhere far far in the back of my head
> i think to remember that a message like "Li 01 01 01 01 lo" sometimes
> occured when one switched the kernel images without re-installing lilo
> after. But sure as hell i didn't change the kernel, and nobody said
> anything about this happening after some failed retries.
> Only way i get that box to boot is by floppy, and that isn't exactly what i
> had in mind.
>
> System Specs :
>
> Dell Dimension XPS P133S (P1 133MHz)
> 32MB RAM
> hda -> WD Caviar 850MB
> hdc -> IDE CD-ROM
> BIOS -> A10
> (Sidenote on the BIOS- at first that sucker didn't even boot from CD.
> Original BIOS was Version A00, updated to A10 (most recent) to get (with
> some other ***) ElTorrito support)
>
How recent is the "most recent" BIOS for a 133 MHz machine? The BIOS
might not support hard drives larger than 540 MB, in which case you need
a boot partition or a boot floppy disk. The kernel doesn't have to be
on the boot floppy. You could make a lilo.conf with
boot=/dev/fd0
root=/dev/hda1
image=/vmlinuz (or whatever your kernel is called) 

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