LILO having a strop

[(Shovel)]

Righty.

I've just (finally) installed Smoothwall on my v. old PC to become a network firewall.

The install goes hunky dory, but LILO is mashed.

I reboot and get the LILO error:

"L 01 01 01 ... 01"

Aparently this could be a memory thing? However, the suggested reboot didn't fix it.

Someone else suggested modifying lilo.conf... which is problematic, since I can't boot the machine. I've tried and failed to find a floppy boot that will let me mount the hard disk to edit it that way.

The system is:

Cyrix 166+ (133Mhz)
32 MB EDO RAM
4GB Seagate hard drive
Some unbranded SiS chipset motherboard (Model number: GMB-P56SPC)
2x Netgear NICs

The only "inconsistancy" I can name is that the first hard drive is hdb, not hda. Why? Because I cannot persuade the bastard son of a bitch to be anything other than the slave... no matter where I put the jumper, the cable, everything, it always comes back as slave. I don't see how this should be a show stopper though? The installation reported that it had partitioned and formatted the correct drive, so I don't see why that should have thrown it?

Anyways, I'm stuck, I'm on the edge of my depth and... errm... help!!!

Thank you thank you thank you thank you

 

[xane]

From the Smoothwall FAQ

Q. I've downloaded the 0.9.9 ISO and tried installation on
a 1GB harddisk. The install works fine up to the point
where the system reboots. LILO starts and produces
the message: LI 00 00 00 00 00..... which repeats
forever.
A. Go into your BIOS and check your hard disk drive isn't
set to LBA. If it is, set it to normal and then re-install.
It could be that your hard disk drive contained another
OS before. You could try the method below to 'clean'
it.
Q. I've obtained a hard disk drive that I used in an SGI or
Solaris box. I can't install SmoothWall on it. What
should I do?
A. It may be that the hard disk drive needs properly
cleaning so fdisk can utilise it. Try running:
dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hda count=1024
before fdisk to erase the partition table. You'll need a
UNIX machine to do this. Of course it may just be that
the hard disk drive is knackered.

 

[(Shovel)]

Thanks Xane. I battled with it for hours and it wasn't happening. By some fluke I remembered an older still 2.5GB Seagate hiding upstairs, so swapped em and it runs a dream.

After some persuasion, network is running, and working, and, like, stuff.