[ale] LILO Problems

[cor.angela at mindspring.com (Cor van Dijk)]

smnoldelinux at mediaone.net wrote:

> I'm tired of booting with a floppy.  Is there _any_ way of using lilo to
> rebuild the MBR of /dev/hda?
>
> I've run lilo repeatedly, but when I boot, I get:
> L 04 04 04 04 04 04 04 04 04 04 04 04 04 04 04 04 04 04 04 04 04 04 04
> 04 04 04 04 04 04 04 04 04 04 04 04 04 04 04 04 04 04 04 04 04 04 04 04
> 04 04 04 04 04 04 04 04 04 04 04 04 04 04 04 04 04 04 04 04 04 04 04 04
> 04 04 04 04 04 04 04 04 04 04 04 04
>
> See a pattern?  I could really use the help.
>
> Thanks,
> Scott

I dont know about all those 04, but the 'L' at the start means that the
steps up to but not including /boot/boot.b have loaded. According to the
literature this usually means a physical error/defect in the boot device or
a faulty disk geometry. Double check lilo.conf and your partitions. Also
make sure that the boot partition does not exceed 1024 cylinders. The only
way I know of to restore an MBR is from within DOS with C:\>  FDISK  /MBR.
Good luck. Cor