LILO ERROR #1 - Lilo boot loader not installing in VectorLinux 7.0 Light edition.

Vexe · 02-07-2013, 11:52 AM

Hey guys, I got this error message during the VL light installation of LILO (I also got it after I tried installing it via 'vliloconf')

Code:

Sorry, but the attempt to install LILO has returned an error, so LILO has not been correctly installed. You'll have yo use a bootdisk to start your machine instead. It should still be possible to get LILO working by editing the /etc/lilo.conf and reinstalling LILO manually. See the LILO man pag eand documentation in /usr/doc/lilo for more help.

The output of fdisk -l:

Code:

Disk /dev/sda: 250.1 GB, 250059350016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 30401 cylinders, total 488397168 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0xa4b57300

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1   *      206848   163842047    81817600    7  HPFS/NTFS/exFAT
/dev/sda2   *   163842048   194562047    15360000   83  Linux
/dev/sda3       194562048   266242047    35840000    7  HPFS/NTFS/exFAT
/dev/sda4       266242048   488394751   111076352    7  HPFS/NTFS/exFAT

Disk /dev/sdb: 16.0 GB, 16013852672 bytes
78 heads, 14 sectors/track, 28641 cylinders, total 31277056 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x0c308b26

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sdb1   *        8064    31277055    15634496    c  W95 FAT32 (LBA)

Now, if you wanna know some details:
There's Win7 in sda1, the sda2 and sda3 were one partition (50 Gigs, extended), I had Ubuntu on it, but then I formatted, split it to 15 and 35GBs.
After I removed Ubuntu, I installed VLocity, the MBR went missing, tried to fix it via the Windows repair disk, it didn't work, it also killed the grub bootloader! I had to install Win7 half way on the 35GBs drive, which got the MBR back, logged back to my old Win7, burned VL7 Light to my pendrive, and finally installed it! But during the installation, LILO failed to install giving me that error message! Now, when I boot, I get the Windows boot manager thingy, giving me only two options (my old win7 and the half-way installed win)
No VL option! The way I'm booting to VL now, is booting the flash drive, then going: 'linux root=/dev/sda2'

How can I get my VL to appear in the OSs list?
Can I install grub instead of LILO?
If not, how can I fix this error of LILO?

Thank you so much in advance

hilyard · 02-07-2013, 01:47 PM

Why not reinstall GRUB2 like demonstrated here ?

Vexe · 02-07-2013, 05:31 PM

@hilyard: OK, great! I managed to install GRUB2, at boot, I got the 'grub >' prompt, but I managed to find the kernel image, initrd, etc.
Now GRUB working fine showing 3 options 1) VectorLinux (GUI normal booting) 2) VectorLinux (TUI) 3- Vista loader.
Now, when I select the "Vista loader", guess what? I get that Windows loader thingy (or whatever it's called) which still gives me those very same 2 options that I used to get before installing GRUB2.
Choosing between that half-installed Win7 (Which no longer exists cuz I formatted its drive) and my old Win7 which works fine.

How can I get rid of that first Win7 option? In other words, I just want the GRUB to display 3 options
1) VectorLinux (GUI)
2) VectorLinux (TUI)
3) Windows 7

Here's its menu entry in the grub.conf file:

Code:

menuentry "Windows Vista (loader) (on /dev/sda1)" --class windows --class os {
	insmod part_msdos
	insmod ntfs
	set root='(hd0,msdos1)'
	search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set=root 127EDF3B7EDF1677
	chainloader +1
}

TobiSGD · 02-07-2013, 06:04 PM

Newer Windows versions have a binary configuration file for their bootloader. You can use bcdedit (should be installed by default in Windows) or tools like EasyBCD for configuring the Windows bootloader.

Vexe · 02-09-2013, 09:41 AM

Thanks! Everything went OK! I removed the first entry, left the other one. And changed the menu timeout to 0. Not sure if I really needed that, since there's only one entry left, but just in case I'd be given a one-entry boot menu

The vid that I learned from (really nice) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iHpsh-plbTA