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From: Account for Debian group mail on 29 Jan 2010 00:30


I'll take a look. I usually don't turn that stuff on but I'll check it
out.

Ken

On Thu, 28 Jan 2010, Stan Hoeppner wrote:

> Account for Debian group mail put forth on 1/28/2010 10:40 PM:
>
>> Well it might be but it hangs up on install.
>
> Could this be due to "BIOS boot sector write/virus protection" being enabled?
>
> --
> Stan
>
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From: Stan Hoeppner on 29 Jan 2010 00:40
Account for Debian group mail put forth on 1/28/2010 11:21 PM:
>
>
> I'll take a look. I usually don't turn that stuff on but I'll check it out.

Twas just a thought. Often that is the cause of that specific hang issue.

However, again, I recommend you stick with LILO. Below is the cause and fix for
the lilo initrd problem discussed in the Lenny Release Notes. If I may be so
bold, it is my opinion that the Debian devs were merely attempting to scare
everyone into using grub because they're trying to eventually eliminate LILO
from Debian. Just my paranoia?

Anyway, something you might want to take a look at from the Lenny
/usr/share/doc/lilo/README.Debian
that fully explains the issue. The issue which the Debian devs/maintainers want
you to solve by switching to grub.


--[ Large initrd files and lilo

By default, LILO loads the initrd file into the first 15MB of memory
to avoid a BIOS limitation with older systems (earlier than 2001).

However, with newer kernels the combination of kernel and initrd
may not fit into the first 15MB of memory and so the system will not
boot properly. It seems that the boot issues appear when the
kernel+initrd combination is larger than 8MB.

If this machine has a recent BIOS without the 15MB limitation, you can
add the 'large-memory' option to /etc/lilo.conf to instruct LILO to use
more memory for passing the initrd to the kernel. You will need to
re-run the 'lilo' command to make this option take effect.

If this machine has an older BIOS, you may need to reduce the size of
the initrd *before* rebooting.

If you are using initramfs-tools, you should replace MODULES=most with
MODULES=dep in your configuration and regenerate your initrd file:

sed -i -e s/MODULES=most/MODULES=dep/ /etc/initramfs-tools/initramfs.conf
update-initramfs -u

If you are using yaird or any other initrd generator, please consult
the documentation for your initrd generator.

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Stan


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From: Camaleón on 29 Jan 2010 04:10
On Thu, 28 Jan 2010 19:40:09 -0800, Account for Debian group mail wrote:

> On one of my machines that I'm trying to upgrade to Lenny has a XFS
> root-boot file system.
>
> The upgrade docs state that I need to switch from lilo to grub for a
> Lenny upgrade. But I cannot get grub to install on this XFS boot file
> system, it just hangs up.
>
> Anyone know how to get this done?

There was a bug (although it seems closed/fixed right now) about this:

***
Freeze when installing GRUB on XFS boot partition
http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=239111
***

OTOH, I've heard that GRUB and XFS are (or were) having some "gitches"
when used together. Not sure if nowadays the problems are fully corrected
but in fact some distributions (openSUSE is one than I'm aware of)
explicitly do not support having GRUB installed in filesystems other than
ext2/ext3. It can be installed but it is not recommended.

Greetings,

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Camaleón


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From: Stephen Powell on 29 Jan 2010 09:10
On Thu, 28 Jan 2010 22:40:09 -0500, Ken wrote:
> Hello,
>
> On one of my machines that I'm trying to upgrade to Lenny has a XFS
> root-boot file system.
>
> The upgrade docs state that I need to switch from lilo to grub for a Lenny
> upgrade. But I cannot get grub to install on this XFS boot file system, it
> just hangs up.
>
> Anyone know how to get this done?
>
> Thanks,
>
> Ken

That is not true. It is true that the Lenny installer installs the
grub bootloader by default (it's called grub by Lenny, but grub-legacy
by Squeeze. Most folks call it grub1. What Squeeze calls grub is
a totally different bootloader that most folks call grub2.) However,
if you're upgrading from Etch to Lenny using the release notes, you do
not have to upgrade your boot loader. My advice would be, "If it ain't
broke, don't fix it." I'm still running lilo under Squeeze due to
problems that I have with grub2.

By the way, even if you're installing Lenny from scratch, the installer
still gives you the option to install lilo instead of grub if you
want to. (At least it does if you run it in expert mode.)
grub1 is a dead end anyway. If lilo is working fine, and you're
happy with it, I would advise you to leave it alone.
That's my two cents worth.


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From: Stephen Powell on 29 Jan 2010 09:40
On Fri, 29 Jan 2010 00:04:51 -0500, Stan Hoeppner wrote:
> The problem described in the release notes arises when you try to install a
> stock Lenny initrd 2.6.26 kernel _after_ the dist upgrade. Apparently some of
> the stock Lenny kernels have an initrd image that's too large for lilo to handle.

lilo uses BIOS calls to load the kernel and the initial RAM disk
image into memory. The kernel is loaded into as low of memory addresses as
possible/practical. Due to restrictions in older BIOSes, the initial RAM disk
image is loaded into memory within the first 16 megabytes of RAM, with the
starting address of the Extended BIOS Data Area (EBDA) as the upper limit
for the end of the initial RAM disk image. The lower limit for the beginning
of the initial RAM disk image is of course the end of the kernel image.

There are two ways around this problem. The first way is to use the "large-memory"
option of lilo. Newer releases of lilo support this option. This allows the
initial RAM disk image to load above the 16M line. However, this requires
support in the BIOS. Most BIOS dates after 2001 or so will support this, but
not all. Make sure that you have a rescue CD handy just in case.

The second method is to reduce the size of the initial RAM disk. By changing
modules=most to modules=dep in /etc/initramfs-tools/initramfs.conf (and
possibly in /etc/initramfs-tools/conf.d/driver-policy as well, if it exists) and
running update-initramfs, you can probably reduce the size of the initial
RAM disk image to the point where it will fit below 16M again.


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