On Sun, Aug 06, 2000 at 04:26:14PM -0700, Dale Morris wrote: > I'm running libranet version of debian potato. It uses the 2.2.14 kernel. I > am having a problem with lilo. > My hard disk is a 15 gig with the following partitions > /=2500 megs > /usr=5000mgb > /home=2500mgb > /var=1250mgb > the rest of the disk is just free space. When I run lilo I get the following > error: > debian:/home/dlm# /sbin/lilo > Fatal: geo_comp_addr: Cylinder number is too big (1046 > 1023) > debian:/home/dlm#
> My bios supports large disk access, but when I try to reconfigure lilo to do > that, I get an error that it's unable to install to the boot block. How would > I edit my lilo config file to get lilo to boot from the hard disk? I even > tried installing and configuring a new kernel (2.2.16) and it worked fine up > until I ran bzlilo and I got an error 2 message, something about being unable > to install to the boot directory.. > any suggestions? > thanks > Hi. I had a similar problem with lilo. I'll describe my situation and my solution, hoping that some of it will help you. I had to re-create my boot record. I run 'lilo' as usual, but it failed, complaining that the current boot record (/boot/boot.b) was created using a previous and not compatiible version of lilo ( it was so : I created the boot record using slink-lilo(21.4), while now I have potato-lilo(21.5beta). So I deleted the boot record with 'lilo -U' (have a rescue disk ready ! ) and then tried to make a new boot record using the debian utility 'mkboot -installkernel'. It failed, complaining that there where more than 1023 cylinders (also true, but I had put 'lba32' option in my lilo.conf! ). Looking into the /sbin/mkboot file ( a shell script ) I found that this utility does not look at your lilo.conf, but use a generic configuration file created on the fly. And, it does not put 'lba32' option in this generic file, so it fails when you have > 1024 cyl ( I think this is because old lilo did not care about, since the 'lba32' feature has been added now ). So I quickly added 'lba32' to the options used by 'mkboot' script, rerun it and it worked this time. So I had new boot record, but not yet the one I defined in lilo.conf. The last step was now run lilo again, which worked. Not exacly your situation, but I hope some of it will help you. Ciao. -- FB