Bug 5573

Summary:	RH 6.1 upgrade installs a lilo.conf which clobbers MBR
Product:	[Retired] Red Hat Linux	Reporter:	Habig, Alec <ahabig>
Component:	installer	Assignee:	Michael Fulbright <msf>
Status:	CLOSED ERRATA	QA Contact:
Severity:	high	Docs Contact:
Priority:	high
Version:	6.1
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:	2000-02-21 21:08:14 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 Habig, Alec 1999-10-05 12:12:38 UTC

In addition to not backing up the existing lilo.conf (see
bug 5512), the RH 6.1 upgrade script neither asks where you
want lilo installed nor looks at your old configuration.  It
points at the MBR (eg, /dev/hda) with no chance of setting
it to the boot partition instead (eg, /dev/hda5).

This rather microsoftish behavior forces a re-install of
whatever other boot manager software one might already be
using.

Comment 1 olorin 1999-10-09 09:34:59 UTC

This particular bug buggered up my perfectly working lilo setup so
badly I couldnt boot off the harddrive after the reboot.
I think the problem was exasperated by the fact that I had a windows
partition marked bootable but in fact had nothing but old data on it.

Comment 2 adrian.lawrence 1999-10-22 18:50:59 UTC

I also suffered from this. Please note that some systems *have* to
boot via loadlin. The old install systems in expert mode used to
request permission to actually run lilo, as opposed to merely
upgrading an rpm. Summary *expert upgrade* must not assume lilo.

Even when lilo is used, it is likely that an expert user has a later
kernel installed with /etc/conf.modules and /etc/lilo.conf customized
to match. After all 2.2.13 is already out, not to mention 2.3.*.

Please revert as a matter of urgency!

Comment 3 ppera 1999-12-06 15:07:59 UTC

I also had this problem when made upgrade from RH 6 to 6.1. I can add that
upgrader (installer) also forgot to offer making boot floppy with new kernel
for ver. 6.1, what would be very velcome in case when you reinstall old boot-
manager (Select-it in my case), and then Lilo 0.21 (installed in boot sector of
Linux part.) works not. And I don't think that it has any relation with what
partition are on hard disk.

Comment 4 Cristian Gafton 2000-01-04 22:27:59 UTC

Assigned to dledford

Comment 5 Bernhard Rosenkraenzer 2000-02-16 15:34:59 UTC

Reassigned to installer - the lilo package doesn't break lilo.conf. The
installer does.

Comment 6 Jeremy Katz 2000-02-17 00:12:59 UTC

If I remember correctly, this is one of the fixes that appeared on the
updates.img for 6.1.  The bug is definitely not present in the 6.2 beta