Re: Ssarge Upgrade-Lilo: FATAL

[Leonard Chatagnier]

Sam Watkins wrote:

I think you'll find that in Debian at the moment, "grub" is a better
bootloader if you want things to just work when you install new kernel
images.  Try installing grub and see if that helps.

If you want to keep using lilo, and want help to fix it, please post
your lilo.conf and the output of:

  ls /
  ls /boot

to me or the list.

If you don't understand exactly how lilo.conf works, you probably
shouldn't use lilo; use grub.

     I considered that but decided not to go to grub since I couldn't get linuz.old to
     boot.  I solved this after giving up on fixing it by reinstalling woody.  I'm sure
     to have problems when I go to sarge again if I haven't switched to grub.  I'll send
     the data if I do.

How do you make those vertical blue lines?

1.  On a previous install of new image I used mkinitrd and it allowed 
sarge to boot up but everything was broke except terminals.  The 
mkinitrd never completed without error and called up the option menu.  I 
have read the man mkinitrd and it seems definitely revelent but how to 
use it not clear.

You shouldn't have to run mkinitrd unless you build your own kernel, the
kernel-image packages already include the appropriate initrd.img files.

     OK, but I never could get it to boot until I executed it.

2. Ran fsck without unmounting and maybe that was a mistake.  Made lots 
of changes saying bad inodes and such.  I don't really think anything 
was wrong with the file system but fsck did.
  

aargh!  doesn't fsck warn you not to run it on a mounted filesystem?
that was certainly a mistake.  don't know how much significant damage it
would have done, but I doubt it's the cause of your lilo problem.

    Yes, but at that time I was desparate and the system was probably unfixable.  I
     did try to unmount but couldn't figure how to do it.  How do you do it?

3.  The last of the output from `apt-get install` was a warning about 
installing a lilo block if you had another operating system installed.  
I answered no several times, without helping, and then said yes to see 
if it might fix things.  It didn't.
  

do you have another OS installed?  if you've been able to boot it
from lilo in the past, upgrading the kernel won't change that.

     Ok, but the warning clearly said if you had another operating system in-
      stalled(MSWindows) or another linux version not to install the block.
      I never heard of the so called block install before I used apt-get to install sarge.
      When I used dpkg -i, that didn't happen.  I eventually installed the block after
      removing and reinstalling but that didn't help.

     Thanks for your response.  I'll get back as soon as I upgrade to sarge.  Please copy
     to [EMAIL PROTECTED] as I'm not subscribed.

     Leonard Chatagnier