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Linux wont BOOT!!!

Installed linux in my 5.1G Hard Drive,
I installed LILO in the same drive as root directory "/"
I added that partition to OS/2 boot manager
When I try to boot, The screen only dysplays:

L

and that's all.

The hardDrive is a Western Digital 35200,
Physicaly it has around 10500 cylinders.
the Bios translates it as something around 523 Cylinders

Whats wring with LILO????

If the problem is the 1023 barrier, How can I know where in my drive is???

spjuver

First, don't use LILO. It is too sensitive. I don't know how LILO works but a guess is that LILO links itself to the cylinder where it can find vmlinuz.
If you move vmlinuz physically on the harddisk you will get the famous 'L'.

If you use windows and have a viruscheck active it can one day say 'Find a virus in the boot sector - removing...' and you have no LILO anymore.

Survey, it is definetly the '1023 barrier' and the solution is the use loadlin or boot disk for linux.

You can check the partitions physical position with fdisk.

jeffa072897

Every time I've seen this the hard disk with Linux on it was not visible during POST. The drive required an OS driver to see it.
Example - SCSI drive on controller with no BIOS
Drives that require disk management software on the
boot sector.
If you can't boot the system with a DOS floppy and see the hard disk in question, you either have to use loadlin or change the controller setup. LILO Will only see drives that are present according to the system's BIOS and/or a disk controller's BIOS.
If the drive isn't there with the BIOS you get the "L"

ASKER CERTIFIED SOLUTION

christg

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hwillekens

Boot linux using loadlin and run lilo again

hal9k

Use a boot disk, like for slackware...at the boot options prompt type 'mount root=/dev/whatever_device_it's_on' (typically /dev/hda1, but you'll want to check with fdisk) when it loads up, login, and then run lilo. take the floppy out again and reboot. If that doesn't work then you've specified options in lilo.conf incorrectly