Bug 44

Summary:	lilo unable to install to mbr
Product:	[Retired] Red Hat Linux	Reporter:	lyons
Component:	installer	Assignee:	David Lawrence <dkl>
Status:	CLOSED CURRENTRELEASE	QA Contact:
Severity:	high	Docs Contact:
Priority:	high
Version:	5.2
Target Milestone:	---
Target Release:	---
Hardware:	i386
OS:	Linux
Whiteboard:
Fixed In Version:		Doc Type:	Bug Fix
Doc Text:		Story Points:	---
Clone Of:		Environment:
Last Closed:	1998-11-19 13:39:40 UTC	Type:	---
Regression:	---	Mount Type:	---
Documentation:	---	CRM:
Verified Versions:		Category:	---
oVirt Team:	---	RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host:
Cloudforms Team:	---	Target Upstream Version:
Embargoed:

Description lyons 1998-11-11 19:00:31 UTC

at the end of the install when lilo goes to write to the MBR
it errors out and I am also unable to make a boot disk. this
is the second machine it has happened on

Comment 1 David Lawrence 1998-11-12 17:55:59 UTC

Need more detailed information about partition setup, hard drive
parameters, and possibility of third party boot loaders.

Comment 2 niles 1998-11-16 17:38:59 UTC

This will happen if have specified a another boot-able OS partition
like DOS, but haven't yet installed it.  E.g. you create the DOS
partition with a DOS floppy disk running DOS FDISK, then you install
Linux and indicate during install that you would like to boot off /dos
as well.  Then, lilo will fail when it can find any boot code for
DOS.  This is VERY bad for new users.  The installer should detect
this condition and remove the unboot-able partitions and re-try the
lilo installation.  Of course, it should indicate this to the user and
explain how to "re-run" the lilo installation once DOS/Win9x has been
installed. **Please fix this RedHat**

Comment 3 David Lawrence 1998-11-17 18:30:59 UTC

You should just choose retry when the lilo installation fails. Then
try again by removing the label for the dos partition and lilo should
then skip trying to add the dos partition to the lilo configuration.
Otherwise you will need to format and make bootable the dos partition
before you install. If you make the dos partition bootable after the
install (using fdisk /mbr) lilo will be overwritten rendering Linux
unbootable.