Package: lilo
Version: 1:24.1-1
Severity: normal
Dear Maintainer,
I have a rather old (flaky, and hard to access) server which uses the
fallback= mechanism in lilo.conf to round-robin between various boot
configs, which worked fine in the past.
I don't know when exactly I tested the mechanism last, but it might have
been before the upgrade to jessie.
Recently, I upgraded the debian kernel and re-ran lilo, then tried to test
the fallback mechanism.
The first boot was normal, the second boot (which should switch to the
first fallback, didn't, lilo did hang like this:
LILO 24.1 boot: p
The "p" is the first letter of the fallback image name
("previous"). Booting again booted the default image, as if no fallback
was given (so not all was lost :).
After experimenting, neither fallback= nor lilo -R nor the lock option
work anymore - all of them lead to a display similar like the above and a
hang at boot, with only the first character of the image name displayed.
So, basically, doing this:
lilo
lilo -R gxpe
Leads to hang like this:
LILO 24.1 boot: g
Or a lock use like this:
boot: rescue-emdeb abc lock
Leads to a hang like this:
LILO 24.1 boot: r
The (slightly cleaned-up to the essentials) lilo.conf looks like this:
boot = "/dev/disk/by-id/ata-Hitachi_HDS722020ALA330_JK1130YAH69SMT"
append = "root=/dev/disk/by-label/ROOT ..."
delay = 50
timeout = 100
unattended
serial = 2,115200n8
lba32
compact
large-memory
map=/boot/map
default=default
### cycling through these:
image=/boot/vmlinuz-3.16.0-4-amd64
initrd=/boot/initrd.img-3.16.0-4-amd64
label=default
fallback=previous
read-only
addappend="..."
image=/boot/vmlinuz-3.16.0-4-amd64
initrd=/boot/initrd.img-3.16.0-4-amd64
label=previous
fallback=rescue
read-only
addappend="..."
image = /boot/rescue-kernel
label = rescue
fallback = rescue-emdeb
initrd = /boot/rescue-initrd
image = /boot/rescue-emdeb-kernel
label = rescue-emdeb
fallback = gpxe
initrd = /boot/rescue-emdeb-initrd
image = /boot/rain.gpxe
label = gpxe
fallback = default
When I run a "lilo" and keep the output of "strings /boot/map" and then
run "lilo -R rescue" and compare it with the saved stings output, then I
can see an additional "rescue" string. Likewise, the commandline I enter
with lock ends up in /boot/map (e.g. "rescue abc lock"), so storing the
commandline seems to work, but booting form it does not.
Thanks for still maintaining lilo, btw., it's much appreciated for its
stability and options such as fallback.
Greetings,
Marc
