linux won't boot

[michaelrj]

When I try to boot red hat linux 7 the computer just stops with "LI" on the screen. It will boot if I use a boot disk. When I've tried re-installing the installation freezed up at a different point each time.

[tonimontanna]

Sounds like the lillo config had become corrupted. You need to boot off your floppy and fix the config. Since your installation froze. You probably wacked your old data. Try reinstalling the OS.

[fancypiper]

Lilo is misconfigured. Maybe these will help.

Lilo Crash Rescue howto (http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/LILO-crash-rescue-HOWTO.html)
Lilo mini how (http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/mini/LILO.html)

The older lilo versions had a limit on where linux could be on the hard drive. You may need to update lilo.

Also see the documentation on the install CD and/or the Redhat site.

You may be interested in Red Carpet (http://www.ximian.com/products/ximian_red_carpet/download.html) to update.

[michaeln]

That happened to me as well. Even when I tried installing with GRUB instead of LILO.....

You have to boot up with the boot disk, fix the lilo conf file and then type lilo in shell.

Worked like a charm for me..

Well I also had to set mine to use lba32...

Anyway that is how I fixed the problem. Hope that helps.

Regards,
michael

[Retsyn]

I have a different but similar problem. I have tried installing 2 different distributions (Lycoris and Mandrake) with the same result; After a *successfull* installation, I am prompted to remove the CD and restart. When I do, the system reports that it can't boot off the CD and just gives up. It should be noted that I already tried changing the boot sequence to no avail... ????

[slapNUT]

It's too bad you did the reinstall. All you needed to do was to boot off the bootdisk and like michaeln said change the line:
linear
to
lba32
in /etc/lilo.conf then run lilo and that would probably fix it.

Try cleaning the cd's and maybe you can get through the reinstall. If they worked once they should work again.

Retsyn
Are you saying you set the BIOS boot order to hard drive first, and the system still wants to boot off a CD?

[Retsyn]

Yeah, no matter what I try, it can't identify the system partition then attempts to boot off the CDROM... I don't know if Grub or LILO (not sure which got loaded) is actually working at all... I went through the 3rd and 4th installtions last night to no avail. I tried taking the HD off the RAID controller and just using the regular IDE, no dice. I also attemted to load it onto a completely virgin disk, Nada...
Just a question, would it matter if the floppy wasn't plugged in?

If it's important, I'm running an Abit VP6 motherboard with dual PIII 1 GHz. The disk I planning on using with Linux is a WD 205AA...