Booting the system fails

holytrousers · 2007-10-22 17:13:17

Hello !
Arch, after a normal shutdown, fails to load !
Lilo checks the bios, loads the kernel, shows some dots, and then freezes .... nothing ....
it constantly fails, even booting the fail safe kernel !
I don't know what could happen !
Maybe the system upgrade ? ( pacman -Suy )
But i do this on a daily basis, and pacman hasn't reported any failures with the download or the install ...
Is there any way to discover what happened ?
It happened to me only once ... with arch on another laptop ...
My filesystem is xfs ... but i havent edited anything and no failures were noticed ...
I also have /boot on an ext2 partition ...
so, how to approach such a situation ? I would normally reinstall the whole system , but i think that there may be another way ?

mico · 2007-10-22 18:24:39

In any case, you can boot a live cd, examine and probably also fix your installation.

Did you run lilo after kernel upgrade and before reboot? If not, I think you could mount your arch / filesystem and arch /boot filesystem under mounted arch / then chroot to arch / mountpoint and run lilo. But it's been a while since I used lilo, so I might be forgetting something. I replaced it by grub for exactly this reason.

Also, was your /boot mounted when you upgraded the kernel? It should be...

holytrousers · 2007-10-22 21:57:52

Well /boot was mounted, and i haven't run lilo.
The Kernel image is there, on the /boot partition ... that is strange because if lilo did not see the kernel image, it wouldn't load it and then freeze ...
But i will try with the chroot option ... and try to see what can be done then ...

Blind · 2007-10-23 05:14:13

If you didn't run LILO after the upgrade, mico is absolutely right. It fails, because the kernel image has a different size etc.
So what you need to do is to boot using a live CD, mount your system (bind the device file system); then you can chroot into the your system and run lilo. No matter what, after each kernel upgrade, you must run lilo - as is written in the upgrade message, by the way Or use GRUB...

holytrousers · 2007-10-23 17:51:55

Folks !
It's running again !
Oof
Humm, why do you prefer grub to lilo ?
I know polyvalent, has a console, graphic login, all the stuff with stages ...
But lilo is so fast !
I hate to wait 10 seconds for grub just to boot !
And lilo's syntax is much easier than grubs ...
what are the advantages of grub over lilo ?

Blind · 2007-10-23 18:36:33

You don't have to remember to run LILO after a kernel upgrade...

mico · 2007-10-23 21:22:16

Yes, that's the one advantage that overweights all its bad points for me. It is harder to setup if you are used to only linux device names, but you do this once and then you can forget about it. It should boot much faster than 10 s, maybe you just set something wrong, you could give it another try. I have 4 machines and it doesn't take nearly that long to load grub on any of them.

Arch Linux

#1 2007-10-22 17:13:17

Booting the system fails

#2 2007-10-22 18:24:39

Re: Booting the system fails

#3 2007-10-22 21:57:52

Re: Booting the system fails

#4 2007-10-23 05:14:13

Re: Booting the system fails

#5 2007-10-23 17:51:55

Re: Booting the system fails

#6 2007-10-23 18:36:33

Re: Booting the system fails

#7 2007-10-23 21:22:16

Re: Booting the system fails

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