System Boots to LI

[stephen90701]

Hi -

problems with my Debian server. It will only boot to LI. I realize that this means that the LILO is having a problem bootstrapping itself to the server.

My question is, can I salvage this without losing any data on the disk itself? I am pathetically behind in all my backups and would prefer not to have to explain why several weeks of data has been lost.

Any assistance out there?

Thanks

[MikeTbob]

Hi stephen90701,
The answer is simple: You need a Linux boot disk. You can use a floppy or a CD, but whatever you use, you need to type something at the boot prompt to make the kernel mount your Linux installation. Essentially, you'll be using the boot disk just to load the Linux kernel, and after that you will be booting into the Linux installation on your hard disk, just like normal. The key command that you need to type at the "boot:" prompt looks like this:

linux root=/dev/hda1
...Where /dev/hda1 is the partition on which your Linux root mount point is. Once you type this, after the system is finished booting, you should find that you're back in your Linux system. From there, all you need to do is type lilo. This will reinstall LILO, using the same settings you had before. (If you want to reconfigure it, you'd better do that first.) In any case, once LILO has been reinstalled, you can reboot, and you should find that it comes up at startup again