So, I'm pleading for help. I've been away from Linux a long time. I still write operating systems, just not that one...I started out using kernel 0.96 and various patchlevels, but left Linux around the release of kernel 2.0 timeframe, so I'm well out of the tools and config loop.
I figured the IA-1 was a great excuse to get back into playing with it. I don't have the luxury of other hardware around to keep a desktop linux box to play with at the moment, though, so building a new image myself, for a while, is out of the question.
Here's the problem - I installed a quick slackware boot disk to image the drive off of the El-Torito image, and it works great. Then, using DskProbe.EXE and the linux-3.img in Windows XP, I tried to build a 32 meg image on my 64 mb CF card. This image looks good, and comparing the bits to the image file retuns a perfect match. (Yeah, I'm paranoid.)
Anyway, I pop the CF card in, make sure the machine reads it, make sure the first boot device is the internal SanDisk, and try to boot. I boot just peachy, and I dd over the linux-3 CF image. Then I pop out the CF and reboot. In fact, these are the exact steps:
- Go into the IA BIOS, setting it to boot from the internal flash.
- Boot up from the internal flash, again going through the prompts, logging in as root.
- Run dd if=/dev/hdc of=/dev/hda count=31296 (DD reports success on the slackware boot. Also, the count of sectors is exactly the one that the image copied from dskprobe.exe shows when writing...)
- Run sync; /sbin/shutdown -h now;.
When you see "Power Down," kill power to the IA, remove the CompactFlash, and bootup. You should now be seeing Jailbait bootup... My problem is that I don't. LILO hangs, and I mean dead-in-the-water on "LI". I must have tried this ten times already...
So, gurus of LILO and X86 boot genii out there: what's the catch, and what am I doing wrong?
