Hi All,

I have a machine that is giving me a bit of trouble. My troubles started after I initiated LVM and rebooted.

My machine won't boot. It stops immediately after displaying booting from CDROM (there isn't any, the drive is empty), and a blinking cursor. What is supposed to happen is that it should boot into linux on /dev/hda1.

I have tried using the R5B7 disk as a rescue disk (Crl+Alt+F2), mounted /dev/hda1, chroot /mnt/hda1, nano /etc/lilo.conf

The output is the following:



I searched this forum and the internet and I did not come up with a solution.

I attempted my own solution by running liloconfig but now the contents of /proc/ is completely missing!

Which of the following should I attempt?

(1) Copy the contents of /proc/ from a working KnoppMyth box (same version) to this now defunct box?

(2) Somehow restore lilo?

(3) Reinstall and start from scratch?

Any suggestion would be greatly appreciated.

Dr. Hood

_________________
KnoppMyth: R5B7
Video Output: 27 inch TV (4:3)
Motherboard: Biostar K8NHA Grand mobo w/nForce3 250Gb
CPU: AMD Sempron 3000+ (1.8 Ghz)
RAM: 1024 Mb
Videocard: Radeon 9500 (64 Mb)
TV Tuner Card: PVR-350
Harddisk: WD160 Gb + Max 300 Gb

It almost sounds like you tried to setup LVM on your root partition (/dev/hda1) which would be bad. The message is the one that you get if the LVM drivers aren't started when you try to mount the pseudo device for the LVM volume. You may very well be in for a fresh install.

i don't think that he setup lvm on / .. if he did he would not have been able to mount it using the
rescue disk.

don't worry about /proc, it is a virtual file system.

As a test. Boot from the cdrom:

At the lilo prompt. -- Type "knoppmyth root=/dev/hda1"

tjc and mac,

Thank you so much for replying. This has been a very interesting experience, one that I am going to share.

BACKGROUND
The owner of this machine is a friend of mine who has an interest in DVR's, so after I explained what MythTV is, he decided to put one together. I got involved after he added a second TV Tuner (PVR-500) and installation was problematic (fix was updating ivtv to 0.4.4) and I offered to setup LVM on his second 300 Gig drive that was unused.

THE PROBLEM REVISITED
I had set up LVM several times before, so I was quite confident that I could get LVM to work. I prefer to setup LVM manually when I am using a completely new disk and the setup has never been configured for LVM previously. I completed the first phase of the LVM setup (i.e., formatting the 300 gig disk as LVM) and it came to reboot. After it rebooted, all that appeared on the screen after the POST was a blinking cursor (see my post above).

ROAD TO THE SOLUTION
At first, I thought the problem was lilo and I spent a lot of time researching and learning about lilo. However, the blinking cursor refused to go away. So, I decided to wipe the system and start over with a fresh install. So, I re-installed on /dev/hda. The installed completed as normal and then rebooted. Blinking cursor remains. Hmmmmm.. I thought.

I then looked inside the case and I noticed that that the end of the hard disk ribbon was connected to the slave drive (the 300 Gig or /dev/hdb) and the master disk (60 gig or /dev/hda) was connected at the middle of the ribbon. I thought..."This is odd".

So, I switched the master (/dev/hda) and slave (/dev/hdb) drives and so that the master is at the end of the disk ribbon and the slave is at the middle.

I then reinstalled KnoppMyth and it completed normally. I then rebooted and I got a Blinking cursor. Hmmmmm...Still not fixed.....

So, I went back into the BIOS and I discovered an option I had never seen before. I discovered that this WinFast BIOS has an option that allows a user to choose which hard disk to boot and for some reason the wrong disk was listed first.

After I made this additional BIOS correction, the system then booted properly. Blinking cursor was gone! Hurray!!!!!!

LINGERING QUESTIONS
So, I am sure that the BIOS change was key in resolving the problem.

However, were the 2 hard drives incorrectly installed with the master disk on the middle of the ribbon cable and could that have initiated the problem?

_________________
KnoppMyth: R5B7
Video Output: 27 inch TV (4:3)
Motherboard: Biostar K8NHA Grand mobo w/nForce3 250Gb
CPU: AMD Sempron 3000+ (1.8 Ghz)
RAM: 1024 Mb
Videocard: Radeon 9500 (64 Mb)
TV Tuner Card: PVR-350
Harddisk: WD160 Gb + Max 300 Gb

Yes. I had horrible problems getting my first KM box to boot from the HD because the BIOS wanted the drive jumpered CS rather than MA and wasn't happy otherwise. Since the BIOS is what does the initial bootsector load you've really got to get it configured correctly.