# LILO hangs up with "L" at start up. Why?



## tcylam (Nov 28, 2004)

*Why does LILO hangs up at start up??*

Hello, 
Initially, on my computer I have windows 98 and I have just installed Red Hat Linux 9 as dual boot on a different partition of a single harddisk. I have also placed LILO in the master boot record (dev/hda) during the installation process.
The installation went ok (I've created my boot diskette as well)  but the problem is when I start up my computer without the boot diskette, I get a "L" at the left-hand corner of my screen and it just hangs there on the screen. I don't get the selection screen to choose between windows98 and Linux.
I have tried boot up with the boot diskette and I managed to get into Linux desktop and that works fine.
Could anyone help me with this problem? What is this "L"? What should I do to solve this? 
Thanks a lot,
tracy


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## batty_professor (Jul 29, 2004)

Hi, and welcome to TSF. While I've not had to deal with dual booting, and I don't know what the "L" is, all I can tell you is to boot into Red Hat and in the system configuration interface, find Boot, and re-configure LILO. Be sure to check the box for Graphical Boot.


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## gotissues68 (Sep 7, 2002)

Its not getting past the first stage of the bootloading sequence. Its having issues reading the MBR if I recall correctly (or something to that effect). If you're able to access the desktop via a boot floppy then boot into the desktop, open a terminal program like konsole or whatever your window manager offers and type the following commands with out the quotes.

"su" < enter your root password when it asks for it
"lilo -v" 

then go ahead and reboot the machine, what this does is reinstalls LILO in the MBR on the first hard disk


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## Skie (Mar 15, 2003)

Edit: gotissues beat me to it. 

The L means that LILO has loaded the first stage boot loader but is unable to find/load the second stage boot loader. Boot from your floppy and edit your /etc/lilo.conf file to make sure that nothing is wrong. Specifically, make sure the boot= and root= lines are correct. 

Once you're done, run this command and reboot: lilo -l (that's an L).

Normally, if LILO hangs with just an L, it should be accompanied by a 2 digit error code. Double check to see if there is one and let us know. Also, do you remember how your partitions are setup? Please give us this info.


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## Lectraplayer (Aug 24, 2002)

So you guys know, as LILO goes through each stage, it will put a letter up. If you watch closely on a working machine, you'll see it put "LILO" on the screen one letter at a time, then the menu screen.

Also try to use GRUB and see if that straightens it up. It may just be a bug in LILO (been known to happen before).


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## Skie (Mar 15, 2003)

When I used to use LILO, it went through its' process fast enough that the whole word was displayed at once. I think you'd have to be on a slower machine to see it go 1 letter at a time. Also, I would recommend sticking with the default boot loader that the distro gives you. While Grub is becoming more popular, LILO has been around longer and is a more mature product. In fact, it's better then grub in some ways, such as with USB keyboards (Grub won't work with USB keyboards).


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## tcylam (Nov 28, 2004)

*tried it*

I've tried what skie suggested. I'm new to linux and didn't quite know if each line in lilo.conf was important and what they mean, so i'v just pasted the whole file below. Here what my lilo.conf gave me:

prompt
timeout=50
default=DOS
boot=/dev/hda
map=/boot/map
install=/boot/boot.b
message=/boot/message
linear

image=/boot/vmlinux-2.4.20-8
label=linux
initrd=/boot/initrd-2.4.20-8.img
read-only
append="root=LABEL=/"

other=/dev/hda1
optional
label=DOS

That's it. Is this configuration normal??

I've reboot with lilo -l but I still get the "L" and no numbers acompanying it after.

Oh yes and when i run lilo -l on konsole, I got : 

Ignoring entry "linear". 
Warning: device 0x0305 exceeds 1024 cylinder limit. 
Added linux. 
Added DOS.

What does it mean? 

By the way, my partitions are: 
/dev/hda1 (vfat) - I have windows in there. Then there's 
/dev/hda5 for my " /boot partition "and 
/dev/hda6 for the " / " partition. 
/dev/hda7 is " swap " , has size 128 MB.

Cheers.


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## Skie (Mar 15, 2003)

I think I see what the problem is. How big is your Windows partition? This line, "Warning: device 0x0305 exceeds 1024 cylinder limit", tells me that your BIOS can't boot off of a hard drive that has more then 1024 cylinders if the second stage boot loader is beyond the 1024 limit. 

This is a limitation that stuck around for since way back when, and is mostly a hardware/BIOS issue, not a software issue. Most modern computers don't have this limitation. How old is the computer and how big is the hard drive?

There are a few ways of getting around this. The first would be to backup everything and repartition your drive so that your /boot is the first partition. I don't know if Partition Magic will allow you to "move" a partition, but it may be something to look into. Or perhaps it'll allow you to chop off the very begining of the partition and you can use that as your /boot. Another would be to boot into windows and run "fdisk /fixmbr" and just pop in the floppy when you want to boot to Linux, and leave it out when you want to boot to Windows. Yet another would be to get a second hard drive and install linux on that drive. Make sure that your /boot is the first partition on that drive and you should be fine at that point. One last possibility would be to see if there's an upgrade for your BIOS.


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## gotissues68 (Sep 7, 2002)

Skie I was going to say pretty much the same thing. Its a problem with where the mbr lies in relation to the boot partition. So here's what you can do. As skie mentioned go ahead and run "fdisk /mbr" and then boot of the floppy and you can install LILO to the first area of the linux partition which will get around the cylinder issue *I think* so instead of installing it to the mbr its installed to the boot block of the linux partition.


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## Spacecadet (Dec 19, 2004)

I've brand spanking new computer, almost :grin: 
My hardware is as follows:
Pentium 4 3.2e GHz
Asus P4C800-E deluxe MoBo
ATA drive which is on IDE A, Master
S-ATA drive on Primary S-ATA

I have windose on on my S-ATA drive
and Gentoo and FreeBsd on on my first ATA drive

My primary IDE is as follows
/hda1 = vfat (for exchanging files between S-ATA and ATA drive)
/hda5 = /boot for gentoo
/hda6 = swap
/hda7 = /
/hda8 = /boot BSD
/hda9 = swap bsd
hda10 = / for bsd
I updated my BIOS a couple of weeks ago. So i guess I'm pretty much in shape, but i have the same problem, "L" and then nothing.
Btw my ata drive is 76 Gig and my primary partition, vfat is about 43 Gig


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