Baslinux mailing list

[sindi keesan <keesan AT sdf.lonestar.org>]

On Sun, 30 Jul 2006 3aoo-cvfd AT dea.spamcon.org wrote:

> sindi keesan wrote:
> > it got as far as LI
>
> That means LILO did not find the kernel.
> ------------------------------
> L     storage medium problem
> LI    kernel not found
> LIL   storage medium problem
> LIL-  damaged descriptor table
> LILO  LILO is happy
> ------------------------------

The kernel is the same one I used on the first computer (where things 
worked) and has the same location in BL3 /boot and the same name and the 
same md5sum as what worked with loadlin, but as an experiment I changed 
lilo.conf to point directly to /dosc/baslin/zimage then I tried to mount 
/dev/fd0 /fd to rewrite the lilo boot disk.

I got a lot of error messages about driveready seekcomplete errors, hda, 
and ide0, and finally killed 'mount' and tried to reboot.

When I rebooted the computer announced it had found an 8GB drive (meaning 
it must have lost it).

The computer no longer boots to DOS (from hda1) and during boot I can hear 
something stop spinning.   It stops at a black screen.  I can get into 
setup (F10 - it does not need a diagnostic disk tho this is not the 
original hard disk) and disable both IDE controllers, after which it will 
boot and ask for a bootable floppy disk.  If I reenable the IDE 
controllers onboard it finds the 8GB disk again but won't boot.

I had to run hdparm to stop getting these errors in the original computer 
this drive came in, but then it always worked, until this morning.  The 
hdparm business had something to do with how the drive was constructed, 
not to fix a failing drive.

This is probably not the cause of loadlin interfering with Xvesa, since 
the other Compaq (Deskpro) has a similar boot problem (needs himem.sys and 
emm386.exe to boot at all with loadlin), but could certainly have 
prevented LILO from finding a kernel on the hard disk.  Maybe lilo did not 
wait as long as loadlin to find its kernel?    This must be a rare cause 
of LILO sticking at LI - can't find the hard disk where the kernel is.

The friend of a friend who gave us the computer kept the hard drive and 
thought everything worked.  But it had been stored some place damp for a 
while (we had to plug and unplug RAM quite a few times before memtest 
stopped complaining, and cpu a few times before it would boot reliably).

We will test the drive in another computer, and if bad replace it, and if 
good, replace the controller with an ISA EIDE one.  Luckily Compaq gave us 
two ISA slots.

I wonder if we could run BL off the 80GB USB external hard drive.  You 
can't set boot options but it does boot from floppy disk and I could put 
on a USB kernel and point lilo at it on a lilo boot diskette.

We also have two computers without ISA slots, and an external modem. 
My partner does not want lucent because it won't work in DOS.  These 
computers have framebuffer video with 1MB RAM and he has a 19" monitor but 
we can add a PCI card without framebuffer video (no AGP slot) and switch 
to it in CMOS to use Xvesa at 1280 resolution if we plan ahead before 
using Opera or Xpdf.

Or we could try the ATI X server on the 330MHz (won't boot after cpu 
upgrade) Emachine where you can't switch between Xvesa and text terminals 
without crashing.

Broken computers are so much more educational.

Sindi