Red Hat Bugzilla – Bug 59761
LILO doesn't replace pre-existing LILO
Last modified: 2007-04-18 12:40:22 EDT
Description of Problem: When installing Hampton beta 1 on top of a non Red Hat Linux installation and using LILO, LILO doesn't replace the pre-existing LILO, and system will not boot. Note: all partitions were reformatted during installation. Two variations observed: Variation #1: Boot shows other distro's splash screen (or text prompt) and then goes into the Red Hat interactive startup, where numerous items fail. System then hangs on "Starting system logger" for several minutes and eventually goes into an endless cycle of apmd[549] and INIT: Id <number> respawning too fast: disabled for 5 minutes. Installing Red Hat with LILO again does not resolve problem. Variation #2: Boot hangs at LI or LIL Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): How Reproducible: Every time I install over another distro using LILO. Installations over another distro with Grub are fine. (Tested over two other distros on five systems.) Steps to Reproduce: 1. Install Red Hat on top of another distro. 2. Set mount points for and reformat *all* existing partitions. 3. Choose LILO as the boot loader. Actual Results: LILO used by previous installer comes up & system does not boot. -- OR -- LI or LIL appears & system does not boot. Expected Results: System should boot. Additional Information:
Unfortunately, this sounds like user error. From your description, I would surmise that the "other distro" is setup to install lilo on the master boot record, and when you are installing the Red Hat product, you are selecting lilo but you are *not* selecting to install it on the master boot record. This leaves the master boot record pointing to a now non-existing lilo second stage boot loader, resulting in failure when it tries to load stuff up. Since we aren't upgrading and existing Red Hat linux installation, we can't determine if you previously used the master boot record for lilo or not, so it is up to the user to specify the correct setup for going over their previous installation. If this isn't the case, then reopen the bug with more details about which lilo installations are using the master boot record and which ones aren't.
"I would surmise that the "other distro" is setup to install lilo on the master boot record, and when you are installing the Red Hat product, you are selecting lilo but you are *not* selecting to install it on the master boot record." Yes, other distros were set up to write LILO to MBR, but in each case when I installed Hampton I selected it to install on the MBR as well. IE, *all* installations of LILO are written to MBR. New Information: I tried installing Hampton 1 over a Red Hat 7.2 installation. The 7.2 had GRUB installed, and I again reformatted all partitions and chose LILO (writing to MBR) for Hampton. The new Hampton installation booted, but it booted using GRUB. I did this twice with the same results both times.
Then this isn't a lilo problem (lilo simply does what it is told to do, it is up to the install code to write a correct lilo.conf during installation). Changing package and owner to the proper package.
There were problems with partition tables not being properly reread in Hampton beta1. If you see this in later betas, please reopen.