Hi all

Have been needing to ask this for a long time now: When i install a second har drive into the place where the cdrom is and then configure it in the bios and boot to linux, lilo gives a 99999 issue and will not boot , but if i remove the hard drive and put back the cdrom, it boots fine. i know that it does this because lilo is configured to use that hardware and if there is something else then it does not know what to do, but is there anyway that this issue can be resolved as would like to just plug in hardrives occasionally into the cdrom place and boot, configure and go. Am maybe wondering if grub is better at handling things like this?

Thanks

"is there anyway that this issue can be resolved as would like to just plug in hardrives occasionally into the cdrom place and boot, configure and go."

In order for the hard drive to boot correctly when you plug it into an address /etc/fstab, the MBR, and the bootloader config file(either /etc/lilo.conf or /boot/grub/grub.conf) must already be configured for that address.

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Steve Stites

but then why can't lilo automactically update itself?

"but then why can't lilo automactically update itself?"

lilo just isn't that smart.

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Steve Stites

well lets hope that this will be a highlight in the next new version of lilo

What about grub, is it any different?

"What about grub, is it any different?"

Grub is a little smarter but not smart enough to meet your requirements. Grub has less problems with minor hardware errors that lilo.

grub.conf can often be update without running grub-install. Whenever you change lilo.conf you have to run lilo.

When grub is screwed up you can edit grub during boot to try to fix the problem on the fly. Lilo has no such facility.

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Steve Stites

have just been to the lilo website and the newest version of lilo is 22.5.9 and the version i am using is 22.4.1 which is quite old. So is it possible to download the new version and install it without damaging anything?

"have just been to the lilo website and the newest version of lilo is 22.5.9 and the version i am using is 22.4.1 which is quite old. So is it possible to download the new version and install it without damaging anything?"

Yes, I have done so in the past, although not with 22.5.9.

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Steve Stites

i have read the changes.txt and the major change from the 22.4.1 to 22.5 was that it had support for it to add more hardrives, so how does one go about installing the new lilo?

But wouldn't it be great if it was?

@firestomper41,
Can you tell us about your linux box configuration ?
Like the hardwares you connected to primary IDE and secondary IDE
If lilo gives L999... when you boot the box, it means that your primary master hard disk does not contain a valid bootloader, either lilo, grub or even windoze bootloader. Please check that you have install lilo or grub in your primary master MBR.

Hope this help.

PS: But you connected the second hard disk as secondary slave, didn't you ? If so, you should not have problem with bootloader.

the configuration that i have is :

On the primary ide i have one hardrive which is a master and lilo is installed in the mbr of that hardrivem, and on the secondary ide i have 2 cdroms one master the other slave and it is when i try to use one of these secondary ide to put a hardrive on that it gives me the L999 issue

How do you upgrade lilo?