hdparm -g NOT= hdparm -i ---LILO hangs @ L

stevewalsh · 07-19-2001, 12:56 PM

My fresh install of RH7.1 hangs at L during LILO.
It will boot from the boot floppy.
The drive is a WD31600 (1.6GB).
BIOS settings are 3148/16/63, hdparm -i (and -I for that matter) show 3148/16/63, but hdparm -g shows 787/64/63.
Why ? And how do I fix this ?

And lastly, is this the 'real' reason LILO is hanging ?

mcleodnine · 07-19-2001, 01:58 PM

When you installed RH and ran /sbin/lilo did you get a 1024 cylinder limit warning?

stevewalsh · 07-19-2001, 03:20 PM

No I didn't get a warning. I had read about the 1024 cylinder issue when researching this LILO thing.
I have tried the 'linear' and 'lba32' keywords in the lilo.conf, and neither helped.

I also read about 'newer' distros having a LILO which avoided said 1024 cylinder issues by having the 'lba32' option implictily assumped by the newer version of LILO. I would have though RH7.1 qualified as 'newer'.
Is this the case ?

mcleodnine · 07-19-2001, 03:22 PM

If you're happy with your /etc/lilo.conf, try and re-run /sbin/lilo. See if you get any errors. If you do, try posting your /etc/lilo.conf.

stevewalsh · 07-23-2001, 09:37 PM

I'm happy (thats relative since it doesn't work)
with the construct of my lilo.conf file. I've run /sbin/lilo and received no errors.
I removed the linear keyword and can get a LI on boot now. According to one of the numerous Linux books I now have (mostly useless dealing with RH7.1 now), it says this points to "...the second stage boot loader loaded, but could not run...". Unfortunately it doesn't offer any further words of help.

It's not going to kill me to re-fdisk the drive and reinstall, with a separate small /boot partition. But it is irking me somewhat since everything is working well once I boot from the floppy.

Any other tricks before I inflict venegence with terminal intensity on the hard drive ?