It sounds like you have a problem with your lilo configuration. You may have more severe problems, including filesystem corruption.
Was the system ever bootable? If so, when did it stop being so? Try booting a rescue distribution -- not your Debian rescue disk, but something like Tom's Root/Boot (http://www.toms.net/rb/), or the LinuxCare Bootable Business Card (BBC). These boot a ramdisk-only system, and should allow you to test your system's integrity and reinstall LILO. On booting the rescue disk, do: e2fsck /dev/hda1 Mount this to some useful place, say /mnt on your rescue system, and reinstall LILO with the -C flag to specify the system (not rescue) lilo.conf: lilo -C /mnt/etc/lilo.conf You may want to test this first with the -t flag. If you continue to have problems, respond with more information, including your disk partition table (fdisk -l /dev/hda), your lilo.conf file, and any error messages produced when you run lilo. Good luck. On Wed, Feb 16, 2000 at 11:17:42PM -0800, Michael Kevin O'Brien wrote: > Hola~ > > I have a laptop that seems to be beyond help. When I try to boot it, I get: > > Kernel panic: No init found. Try passing init= option to kernel. > > What exactly does this mean? When I boot the rescue floppy, then type rescue > root=/dev/hda1 I get: > > VFS: Mounted root (ext2 filesystem) readonly. > > but, the system hangs (or at least doesn't change for over ten mins. When I > boot the rescue floppy, then type rescue root=/dev/fd0 I get: > > Unable to load NLS charset cp437(nls_cp437) > VFS: Mounted root (msdos filesystem) readonly > Unable to open an initial console > > Now, I'm not sure why this doesn't work. I thought the rescue floppy had a > bootable version of the kernel on it. > > I can start the installation process from the rescue disk. I can mount the > swap and main partition. I can install the kernel, drivers, and base system. > However, when I try to make the hd bootable, I get an error dialog about how > the process failed. (I am assuming lilo reports some error that doesn't make > it out of the ui.) Is there a way to put the installation script into a mode > where it actually reports errors instead of generic dialogs? Won't swear to it, but I believe error messages are logged to another VC (virtual console). Try <cntl><F#>, which will switch you between VCs, for numeric values of '#'. Logging occurs on VC 3 or 4, IIRC. > Is there any hope? Ideally, I'd like to get the drive booting without > scrubbing it. It would be nice to keep all the code and such I have in my > home dir. It would be great to keep all the packages I have installed, but > that's more of a secondary priority. Even if you have to reinstall Debian there should be no need to overwrite your /home tree. > Please cc me on any replies. > > MO > > -- > > Michael O'Brie > [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Alias|Wavefront > 206.287.5634 Polygonist > > "This will not look good on a resume." > -Robin Williams > > > -- > Unsubscribe? mail -s unsubscribe [EMAIL PROTECTED] < /dev/null > -- Karsten M. Self (kmself@ix.netcom.com) What part of "Gestalt" don't you understand? SAS for Linux: http://www.netcom.com/~kmself/SAS/SAS4Linux.html Mailing list: "subscribe sas-linux" to mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
