[Peeweelinux] lilo.conf hangs

[Barry Gershenfeld]

>I have been playing with lilo.conf to try another kernel image. I tried 
>the other image I made but it didn't work and then I tried to restore 
>the original one but it doesn't work so I am assuming it is a problem 
>with my lilo.conf file.

It used to work?  Did you install lilo this way when you got
it to work?  I am not familiar with installing from a chroot
environment, nor do I use a CF disk, so while I would usually
question entries in your lilo.conf file, they are probably
right, if it used to work.

So, which line(s) did you change?
Or, what are you doing different?

>I then run lilo and it says
>Added linux *

So lilo doesn't think you have any errors.

>However after rebooting all I get is LI and the system hangs.

This means that you did not get to load the kernel.  That 
means you don't have to worry about 
  -append arguments to the kernel
  -initrd
  -init
  -startup scripts
  -mounted drives
because none of this will have happened yet.

>also I don't really understand about 
>initrd and what script causes it to load into ram2?

The kernel, after it is running, after it has detected processor
and hardware, wants to mount a root file
system to work from.  This can be a ramdisk.  From watching it
boot, it is apparent the code for mounting a ramdisk and even
the copying-to-it part are in the kernel.

Up until this point the kernel is a single piece of code doing
its thing.  Once a root disk is mounted it (tries to) start init
and from there inittab and all the other scripts start running
and other processes can be created.


More specifically, when you see "LI", code in the boot sector
has executed, read what it thinks is the map file, loaded what
it thinks is the kernel loader, and tried to jump to it.

The most common problem is "geometry mismatch", which in a few
words means that lilo (when you install it) has to be able
to predict exactly what to feed the BIOS on boot up such
that it will read the same device/sectors it found during
the install.

Well, you said "any help" :)

Barry