I am new to Linux and would appreciate any help with a bootloader problem. I install KnoppMyth R5E50 from CD and all appears to go well until the reboot where I get the "L 99 99 99" error. This indicates it cannot load the 2nd stage bootloader.

My hardware:
Motherboard: ASUS P4B266-VMX
CPU: P4 1.7GHz Celeron
Memory: PC2100 256Mb
HD (just 1): ATA-66 30Gb, Quantum Fireball LM30 (PATA)
Video card: ATI Radeon 7000 32Mb AGP
TV card: Hauppauge WINTV NOVA-T (DVB)
BIOS: AMIBIOS


Things I have tried:

* Did md5 check on install CD (no probs)
* Tried other versions of KnoppMyth (R5D1, R5A30)
* Checked BIOS to make sure there is no virus protection
* Check BIOS to make sure LBA is enabled for the drive
* Booted into shell and manually ran lilo to update the MBR
* Booted into shell and looked at lilo.config for LBA32
* Performed manual install of KnoppMyth R5E50 and created partitions
* Used DBAN to wipe the drive and reinstalled KnoppMyth
* Switched drive from Master to Cable Select
* Sacrificed a goat to the Lord of Darkness at dawn on the Winter Equinox

Nothing changed the behaviour.

I then installed Debian (successfully) which I understand uses a different bootloader. I was hoping to install MythTV as a package but the dependencies are broken. I started downloading and making the dependencies manually, but it all got a bit hairy so I gave up.

I also installed Ubuntu without problems. Again, no working MythTV packages, but again it uses grub, not lilo.

My experiments with the other distros lead me to believe the hardware is sound.

Finally, something weird happened when I went back to KnoppMyth R4V2. This actually installed OK, but I have a DVB card so couldn't use it. Later I had the idea of comparing lilo.conf from that install with the later installs, but ... it wouldn't install again and gave the same old L 99 errors. This unpredictability concerns me but maybe it'll ring bells with someone.

Thanks for reading and any help would be much appreciated.

w3dgeley

Not sure if this is correct but maybe it has to do with how your optical drive is connected (which is something you didn't mention in your hardware config).

Is it on the same cable as your hard drive? If so, and if you have the option of moving it to a separate connection on your motherboard, that may help. If not, then never mind.

I saw this error when I added a SATA drive to my R5D1 system. I was able to fix it by booting from the KnoppMyth CD and running fdisk and marking the KnoppMyth partition bootable. For some reason the Auto Install in R5D1 did not mark the install as bootable. It booted fine without the bootable flag until I added the SATA drive. At that point I believe that LILO got confused as to which drive to boot and gave me the L 99 error. Once I set the bootable flag all was right with the world again.

Britney

Well, thanks for replies, but no luck so far.

The CD drive is on the secondary IDE channel with the hard disk on the primary, so nothing unusual there.

fdisk and lido both report the first partition as bootable:


Any further suggestions gratefully received!

Does your motherboard support SATA? Perhaps disabling it in the BIOS may help.

I've had this happen 3 times in R5E50. No big deal, I boot up R5E50, mount my main data partition at read/write, chroot myself under the root directory and rerun lilo. Problem solved.

_________________
Knoppmyth 7.02 Kernel 2.6.39-LINHES
[MBE] SilverStone LC-10 HTPC Case, Asus M2NPV-VM, AMD X2 4200+, 1G RAM, Nvidia 9500 PCIe, PVR500 and a HD-PVR - Rockin VDPAU

Thanks for the new suggestions.

Re: BIOS SATA setting - I don't think my motherboard supports SATA. Checked the manual and the BIOS and no mention. It's probably just a touch too old.

As far as re-running lilo is concerned - a good idea and yes I have tried that. The commands I ran:

mount -t ext3 -o rw /dev/hda1 /mnt
chroot /mnt
su
lilo

I am new to Linux so maybe I'm not doing this right, but lilo does seem to report success.

Hi,

Based on the size of the drive, 30 gig, I would think you are looking to make it work, learn a little and then make plans for a full KM box? If that is the basic plan, I would simply use unbuntu to make an "extra" partition.. hda1 ~5 gig (myth os), hda2 ~5 gig (ubuntu os) hda 3 ~ 384 meg(swap) and hda 4 the remainder for /myth. Do follow the pamphlet to manually make swap & the /myth partition formating. Then auto upgrade of KM to install.

Then install ubuntu and it should pick up KM for the grub loader. Easily added if not.

You should then be able to boot into either os. Once the setup is finished, check the /etc/fstab and see where your fourth partition is to be mounted and then mount it.Since you already formatted it following the manual install guidence, do a cp -a /myth/* /mnt/hda4 ? to the mounted 4th partition. When finished, umount the hda4, edit the /etc/fstab to be /dev/hda4 /myth ext3 auto,users,exec 0 0 (simply remove the no from auto), save & exit then mount /myth .

I would reboot and when you choose KM to boot, all should be good. Granted it doesn't fix the 99 error directly. If you want to do future upgrades, use manual or if you put KM into hda1 an auto upgrade should work. I mostly do manual. Key for upgrades is to install boot loader to PARTITION so not to destroy the grub loader.

It is just an alternitive route to take
Mike

Thanks for the advice Mike. You are quite right that my 30Gig setup is a try out before committing money to the project.

The good news is I now have MythTV working, but never got to the bottom of the original problem.

I tried following your instructions using Ubuntu to install grub as the bootloader, but whether it is my inexperience or an underlying problem, I couldn't get KM to boot. I couldn't get any output from the boot at all.

So I took the idea and tried a different bootloader - installed WinXP and followed instructions on setting up dual boot. The advantage being that this is a much documented process so guidance was readily available. But yet again, couldn't make it work - got to the Windows boot menu but no output when choosing the KM partition.

Fortunately, I saw mention of MythDora on these forums - a distro I hadn't come across, so I decided to give it a go. Happy days! It wasn't 100% straightforward to install - the default install options are guaranteed to fail - but I got there in the end and can now play with the application itself.

So thanks to everyone who posted suggestions. It would have been nice to get to the bottom of the problem (for anyone else with the same problem), but I've spent too many hours on it now.

Hi,

Sorry to hear you were not able to make the connect into KM. Maybe I left some small tid bit out of the steps??

Anyway, in case you would like to give it a second go, here is what the key parts are for my /boot/grub/menu.lst file.
# I add some time as I sometimes get side tracked waiting for post
timeout 180

# and I prefer this menu lay out
color cyan/blue white/blue

# This entry automatically added by the Debian installer for an existing
# linux installation on /dev/_da_.
title KnoppMyth

# partition counting from zero ie 2 would equal partition 3
root (hd0,_)

# /dev/_da_ counting from one, remember, this is the "real" partition, fill in the red blanks with information as seen with ls /boot on the KM install. You can get that right after you exit the install. (or boot the KM install cd, exit, then should be able the see the info also.)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.1_-chw-_ root=/dev/_da_ ro splash=silent apm=power-off nomce
initrd /boot/initrd.gz
savedefault
boot

Even if you don't have that information handy, put what you have in the menu.lst and at boot time you can edit the line to fill in the blanks (works for the current boot time) Very handy after an upgrade!

MythDora wouldn't work for me, would have liked to see it just for grins and maybe an idea or two. No matter, Cecil is stuck with me cause I like my KM and what ever extras I need, I simply add

Anyway, best wishes!
Mike

I wish I'd had you looking over my shoulder, Mike, to get it working!

Anyway, I'm very happy with MythDora. The install was a lot slower than KM and it took a few attempts to get it right but now it is working, the picture is very smooth indeed. The only thing that doesn't fully work is the remote control, but I'm hopeful that some fiddling will fix that.

It just goes to show that one size doesn't fit all when it comes to Linux...

Hi,

No problem. A google search on L 99 brought up a couple of tips in case you may someday wish to re-visit.

http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/Linux/doc...ngle/LILO.html
http://wiki.linuxquestions.org/wiki/LILO_Error_Codes

Mike

I've just upgraded my 30Gb disk to a 300Gb disk and the problem has gone away. The 30Gb disk showed no errors and worked perfectly in every other way, so I have no idea why lilo took umbrage with it!

Hi,

Nice to hear the good news on the 300gig drive.

Do some searching in google for the L 99 and experiment to figure out the cure. Double check the jumpers, end of cable (see the wiki for many helpful tips) but basicly it was some form of mis-write of lilo to the boot sector. Compare the lilo.conf on the 300 with the one on the 30. It may be something very simple that lilo -v may have fixed.

Bright side is you have a 30 gig to learn on as once you get your "main" machine tweaked, you most likely won't want to "play" by experimenting. The 30 gig can come to be the sand box.

Enjoy your KM machine
Mike