davepass

I was trying to upgrade from woody to sarge. I followed the instructions on http://www.debian.org/releases/stabl...rading.en.html. When I attempted to reboot I got the following error:


Boot from ATAPI cd-rom: failure...
LI



I have searched the web and the only reference I can find to this error indicates that LILO needs to be rebuilt. Being a newbie, I'm not sure if this is accurate or what it even really means. Can anyone point me in the right direction?

spencerf

sounds like you have the boot order in your bios set to cdrom. You should enter your bios and change boot order to boot from harddrive first.

__________________
All right, brain. You don't like me and I don't like you, but let's just do this and I can get back to killing you with beer. All New Users Read This!!! If you have a grub problem please look at GRUB MANUAL

davepass

My BIOS was set for floppy, cd then hd0. This is how it's always been and used to work before I tried this upgrade.

Anyway, I changed it to boot from hard drive 1st and now just get


LI


on screen. Uuuuug. Any ideas?

spencerf

did you update the kernel?

this is my only idea since I'm not a debian user. But if you did update kernel then you have to reconfigure lilo.

__________________
All right, brain. You don't like me and I don't like you, but let's just do this and I can get back to killing you with beer. All New Users Read This!!! If you have a grub problem please look at GRUB MANUAL

davepass

hmmm, I don't think I upgraded the kernel.

I am in the process of creating a rescue disk using rawrite on my WinXP box. Is this an appropriate next step? Where do I go from there?

spencerf

you can use a rescue disc or a live distro which I think both will serve you well.

__________________
All right, brain. You don't like me and I don't like you, but let's just do this and I can get back to killing you with beer. All New Users Read This!!! If you have a grub problem please look at GRUB MANUAL

lestoil

That LI error is showing that LILO stage one is not starting. I think you are given option to install lilo during upgrade. Lilo or grub boot disk should help deal with that error. As root mkboot command should help create boot floppy. man mkboot can give more info.
http://www.debian.org/release/sarge/...e-notes.en.txt may be helpful.
Sarge defaults to grub boot loader. But if you were using lilo you should've been able to edit /etc/lilo.conf for new setup--not forgetting /sbin lilo after edit-- before reboot. Make sure sarge(stable) sources have main contrib non-free at end in /etc/apt/sources.list. I would suggest installing sarge 2.4x kernel-image before reboot into sarge. See how your system works with that kernel for a while. You can later install 2.6x kernel-image if you like.
Good luck.

mr.MikyMaus

Yes, afaik that "LI" error really shows an error during
LILO's stage one. Since I'm not lilo user, I cannot tell
you for sure what to do, but I think switching from
lilo to GRUB could be the easiest way to solve this problem:

Just download Knoppix Live CD, burn it, boot it and run
If you have an NT-based Windows (like NT, 2K, XP),
Grub should be able to detect it as well and properly
setup itself.

GL

-M.

davepass

ok, booting from the knoppix cd has gotten me farther than before. It looks like everythingboots but when it tries to start x, it gives

Error: no suitable x server found for your card



and then it hangs. Surely there's some way to just into command line mode or otherwise bypass this?

davepass

ok, I'm finally able to boot from knoppix cd. I tried

grub-install hd0


but got an error:

/sbin/grub-install: line 399: /usr/bin/uniq: input/output error
could not find device for /boot: Not found or not a block device


Unfortunately, this does not mean a whole lot to me. Any ideas for what else I might try?