Weblog entry #157 for simonw
See all weblog entries made by simonw.
#157
Old BIOS settings
Posted by simonw on Fri 23 Mar 2007 at 14:45
GRUB hangs at "Please wait".
Lilo hangs after "L 99 99 99" (99 repeats for ten lines).
This can occur in the boot disk is larger than the BIOS can handle, so Lilo can't load the bits it needs. The Debian Sarge installer is happy to install to such a partition (as the installation is done from Linux, not the BIOS, and Linux can handle it).
Some BIOSes allow you to set "LBA" access for a disk, if you put a large partition on it, which will fix the problem. Otherwise create a /boot that isn't too big, rather than one partition.
This was all common knowledge in 1999, but it seems it wasn't at the forefront of my mind whilst recovering some ancient PC.
Lilo hangs after "L 99 99 99" (99 repeats for ten lines).
This can occur in the boot disk is larger than the BIOS can handle, so Lilo can't load the bits it needs. The Debian Sarge installer is happy to install to such a partition (as the installation is done from Linux, not the BIOS, and Linux can handle it).
Some BIOSes allow you to set "LBA" access for a disk, if you put a large partition on it, which will fix the problem. Otherwise create a /boot that isn't too big, rather than one partition.
This was all common knowledge in 1999, but it seems it wasn't at the forefront of my mind whilst recovering some ancient PC.
Comments on this Entry
Ouch -- sounds like an interesting afternoons work.
I have a small collection of (near) priceless floppies (priceless to me anyway), one of which is a GRUB boot floppy. With a few lines at it's command prompt, it will get you going on most machines, even those from around 1999 ;-)
Cheers.
[ Parent | Reply to this comment ]