I was having some hardware problems with my drives, and it seems to have
damaged my setup (which is weird, because I thought I had a normal shutdown
just before the problem). My boot floppy is from a couple generations back
(2.4.7, I think) from my current kernel 2.4.9. I'm running woody. I think
I've updated LILO more recently than the kernel, which is a custom build.
I have the windows 2000 boot loader on the master boot record. One of the
options invokes an image of the start of /dev/hda6, my Linux root partition
(inside an extended partition). I use LILO. I had got a bit casual about
the boot floppy because I recall recovering successfully before from a
different version.
If I boot the regular way (NT loader, select item off the menu) I go to the
very start of the LILO load. The letters LI appear on the screen, then it
stops. The Linux boot sector image (boot.lnx) that the NT loader uses has
no time stamps indicating recent modification, and it is still the proper
512 bytes.
If I use my (dated) emergency Linux boot floppy, it goes into an apparently
infinite loop warning that it can't find ...2.4.7/modules. That's true;
those directories aren't there anymore. I have tried holding down shift or
alt, but can't get a chance to intervene in this boot process.
I made a rescue diskette from rescue.bin in the boot floppies section for
woody. This complains about missing 2.2.19/modules (rescue
root=/dev/hda6). (Why is the woody installation using a 2.2 kernel?).
I continue to hope this is just a minor glitch with the loading, though the
fact that boot.lnx seems unchanged is not encouraging.
I'd appreciate help diagnosing the problem, fixing the problem, or even
booting into a minimal Linux so that I can see if my partitions look OK
from there. Because there was warning about the hardware problems, I did
have a chance to burn a CD with /etc, /boot, and /root on it.
