LILO 24.0 Loading SlackwareEBDA is big; kernel setup stack overlaps LILO second stage

[Frank Westlake]

After restoring packages and using the laptop for a couple of days I turned on the computer and instead of the normal LILO message I get this:

LILO 24.0 Loading SlackwareEBDA is big; kernel setup stack overlaps LILO second stage

After a little searching it seems the fix is to run LILO again, but:

- What caused it in the first place?
- How do I prevent it?

Finding the fix was easy but applying it will not be easy without a bootable disk.

Frank

[Henrik Carlqvist]

On Sun, 06 Apr 2014 14:06:09 -0700, Frank Westlake wrote:
> After a little searching it seems the fix is to run LILO again, but:
>
> - What caused it in the first place?
> - How do I prevent it?

Usually you need to run lilo again after having rebuilt or upgrader your
kernel. My guess is that you now have reinstalled some package containing
the bzImage in /boot that lilo is pointing to.

Even it the name of the compressed kernel image file is the same as
before the file is stored in another physical position on the disk. You
need to run lilo to point the boot loader to the disc sector containing
your kernel.

regards Henrik
--
The address in the header is only to prevent spam. My real address is:
hc351(at)poolhem.se Examples of addresses which go to spammers:
root@localhost postmaster@localhost

[frank.w...@gmail.com]

From Henrik Carlqvist :

>Usually you need to run lilo again after having rebuilt
>or upgrader your
>kernel. My guess is that you now have reinstalled some
>package containing
>the bzImage in /boot that lilo is pointing to.

>Even it the name of the compressed kernel image file is
>the same as
>before the file is stored in another physical position
>on the disk. You
>need to run lilo to point the boot loader to the disc
>sector containing
>your kernel.

OK. I'm pretty sure I've booted more than once since
reinstalling everything, but I guess either I haven't or
perhaps suspending to disk delayed it.

That's two scares for me this month and we're only 1/5
through it! Actually it's three scares because my
Android failed last month and I've been building a new
one this month.

Thanks again Henrik Carlqvist.

Frank

[Kees Theunissen]

frank.w...@gmail.com wrote:

> OK. I'm pretty sure I've booted more than once since reinstalling
> everything, but I guess either I haven't or perhaps suspending to disk
> delayed it.

A delayed boot problem is a common symptom when a kernel is replaced
without running lilo.

Replacing the kernel marks the disk sectors used by the old kernel
as "free" in the file system, but those sectors still contain the
old kernel. If LILO loads those sectors chances are that still a
complete kernel will be loaded. Boot problems are delayed until
those sectors are actually reused for something else.

Regards,

Kees.

--
Kees Theunissen.

[frank.w...@gmail.com]

From Kees Theunissen:

>A delayed boot problem is a common
>symptom when a kernel is replaced
>without running lilo.

>Replacing the kernel marks the disk
>sectors used by the old kernel as
>"free" in the file system, but
>those sectors still contain the old
>kernel. If LILO loads those sectors
>chances are that still a complete
>kernel will be loaded. Boot
>problems are delayed until those
>sectors are actually reused for
>something else.

Thank you.

I had to fix the problem after that occurred by booting
from a USB-stick and doing the following:

mkdir /xxx
mount /dev/sda3 /xxx
mount --bind /dev /xxx/dev
lilo -r /xxx
reboot

What is the proper way to do this, instead of as a
repair after boot failure?

Frank

[Grant]

After a few recoveries from this situation you will rarely reboot
prior to a needed 'lilo' ;) Back in '97 I saw no way forward than
to reinstall after a boot failure, stuff happens...

Grant.
>
>Frank

[frank.w...@gmail.com]

From Grant:

>Back in '97 I saw no way forward than
>to reinstall after a boot failure, stuff happens...

Back in '97 you might not have been able to find the
solution through an Internet search like I did
yesterday, and yesterday I had to go through two pages
of hits before finding it. My search query was the
subject line of this thread. It didn't occur to me to
search Usenet until afterwards, but I wanted to get both
the prevention and repair documented here so that
someone could do so.

Frank

[Michael Black]

But if lilo is the only thing missing, there really isn't a problem.

I used to put lilo on a floppy disk, afraid of the warnings about lilo
(which were unfounded). But once I started dual-booting (the previous
version of Slackware as the other boot), I tended to install without lilo,
then do it by hand from the old release. I guess I have a small usb flash
drive that boots it on the current install, but I'm not sure where that
is.

I remember someone posting about forgetting to run lilo during the
installation and either wondering what they could do, or mentioned that
they'd reinstalled because they'd forgotten that step. It was a pretty
minor step, and one can salvage it.

Michael

[frank.w...@gmail.com]

So far everyone has just said to run 'lilo'. Is that it
-- no parameters? Just this

lilo

after an install? No '-r'?

Frank

[Henrik Carlqvist]

Simply running lilo without any parameters will work if you have booted
into your working system and then replaced the kernel. You should then
run lilo without any parameters to use /etc/lilo.conf of your booted
system.

If you rebooted after switching kernel without running lilo your system
might become broken and refuse to boot. Then you will have to use some
kind of rescue CD or installation CD. From the rescue or install
environment you can mount your root partition (and possibly also boot
partition) in some mount point like /mnt/hd and /mnt/hd/boot. To make
lilo use /mnt/hd/etc/lilo.conf and /mnt/hd/boot even though lilo.conf
points to /boot the switch -r makes lilo chroot into /mnt/hd.

[frank.w...@gmail.com]

From Henrik Carlqvist :

>On Mon, 07 Apr 2014 18:40:40 +0000, frank.westlake
>wrote:
>> So far everyone has just said to run 'lilo'. Is that
>it -- no
>> parameters? Just this
>>
>> lilo
>>
>> after an install? No '-r'?

>Simply running lilo without any parameters will work if
>you have booted
>into your working system and then replaced the kernel.

Thanks again, and thanks for your patience.

Frank

[Peter Chant]

On 04/06/2014 10:06 PM, Frank Westlake wrote:> After restoring packages

and using the laptop for a couple of days I turned on the computer and
instead of the normal LILO message I get this:
>
> LILO 24.0 Loading SlackwareEBDA is big; kernel setup stack overlaps
LILO second stage

Did you let slackpkg upgrade the kernel?

This bit me when I let slackpkg update the kernel, due odditied of my
config there was no lilo.conf so updating lilo failed.

Pete

[Peter Chant]

On 04/07/2014 10:21 PM, Henrik Carlqvist wrote:

> If you rebooted after switching kernel without running lilo your system
> might become broken and refuse to boot. Then you will have to use some
> kind of rescue CD or installation CD. From the rescue or install
> environment you can mount your root partition (and possibly also boot
> partition) in some mount point like /mnt/hd and /mnt/hd/boot. To make
> lilo use /mnt/hd/etc/lilo.conf and /mnt/hd/boot even though lilo.conf
> points to /boot the switch -r makes lilo chroot into /mnt/hd.

What do people do for rescue. I tried to rescue a system with a 14.1
install disk and that option is no longer supported from what I can see.
Not unless I work up my grub-foo anyway.

Pete

[Michael Black]

Isn't there now a step in the install process where you can make a USB
flash drive into a boot device? I'm sure when I put 14 on this computer,
there was a step (instead of the old "Do you want to make a boot floppy",
which can no longer be since the kernel is too big) that offered me the
chance, and I'm sure one of my 1gig USB flash drives can boot slackware.
But since I've only done that once, the experience isn't that strong in my
mind.

It's not the same as a rescue disk, but it is there if lilo gets messed
up.

Michael

[frank.w...@gmail.com]

From Peter Chant:

>> LILO 24.0 Loading SlackwareEBDA is big; kernel setup
>stack overlaps LILO second stage

>Did you let slackpkg upgrade the kernel?

That's a difficult question to answer because of the
word "let", so I'll just answer that 'slackpkg' did
reinstall the same kernel package.

Frank

[frank.w...@gmail.com]

From Peter Chant:

>What do people do for rescue. I tried to rescue a
>system with a 14.1
>install disk and that option is no longer supported from
>what I can see.

I used the 14.1 install disk just to boot, then I
invoked the series of commands that I listed higher up
in this thread. I don't know what a rescue disk has on
it.

Frank

[Helmut Hullen]

Hallo, frank.westlake,

Du meintest am 07.04.14:

"That depends!"

You need "-r" when you have bootet your system from something like a
live-CD.

Viele Gruesse
Helmut

"Ubuntu" - an African word, meaning "Slackware is too hard for me".

[Kees Theunissen]

Peter Chant wrote:

> What do people do for rescue. I tried to rescue a system with a 14.1
> install disk and that option is no longer supported from what I can see.

I always use usb-and-pxe-installers/usbboot.img copied to my smallest
usb stick. The "welcome screen" tells how the "root=..." and "rdinit="
parameters can be used to boot into an installed system. As far as I
this hasn't changed recently.
Here is the "welcome screen" from the 32 bits 14.1 usbboot.img:

-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Welcome to Slackware version 14.1 (Linux kernel 3.10.17)!

If you need to pass extra parameters to the kernel, enter them at the prompt
below after the name of the kernel to boot (huge.s etc). NOTE: If your
machine
is not at least a Pentium-III, you *must* boot and install with the huge.s
kernel, not the hugesmp.s kernel! For older machines, use "huge.s" at the
boot prompt.

In a pinch, you can boot your system from here with a command like:

boot: hugesmp.s root=/dev/sda1 rdinit= ro

In the example above, /dev/sda1 is the / Linux partition.

To test your memory with memtest86+, enter memtest on the boot line below.

This prompt is just for entering extra parameters. If you don't need to
enter
any parameters, hit ENTER to boot the default kernel "hugesmp.s" or
press [F2]
for a listing of more kernel choices. Default kernel will boot in 2
minutes.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------

[Henrik Carlqvist]

On Mon, 07 Apr 2014 23:21:19 +0100, Peter Chant wrote:
> What do people do for rescue.

This depends upon what kind of problem need to be solved and what kind of
bootable linux system happens to be closest...

> I tried to rescue a system with a 14.1 install disk and that option is
> no longer supported from what I can see.

To fix a broken lilo installation like in this case the 14.1 install disk
works fine. As mentioned befor you could boot into the install CD, mount
your partitions and run lilo in chroot. Or you could use the kernel on
the installation disk to boot into your installed root file system.

If you want a more full featured environment you might prefer something
like Knoppix. There are also live CDs like SystemRescueCd which have
choosen the installed tools to be most useful for disk rescues.

But the important thing is not which CD to choose, the important thing
when rescuing disks it to know and understand what you are doing and why
you are doing it. There are many different ways to get a broken system
and each way needs it own solution. There is no such simple thing as
booting a CD, pressing a button and all problems will be fixed.

[Grant]

I've never used more than the install boot CD, mount the busted OS part on
/mnt, then 'vi /mnt/etc/lilo.conf', followed by 'lilo -r /mnt', reboot.

Grant.
>
> Michael

[frank.w...@gmail.com]

From Henrik Carlqvist:

>On Mon, 07 Apr 2014 23:21:19 +0100, Peter Chant wrote:
>> What do people do for rescue.

>This depends upon what kind of problem need to be solved
>and what kind of
>bootable linux system happens to be closest...

>> I tried to rescue a system with a 14.1 install disk
>and that option is
>> no longer supported from what I can see.

>To fix a broken lilo installation like in this case the
>14.1 install disk
>works fine. As mentioned befor you could boot into the
>install CD, mount
>your partitions and run lilo in chroot. Or you could use
>the kernel on
>the installation disk to boot into your installed root
>file system.

>If you want a more full featured environment you might
>prefer something
>like Knoppix. There are also live CDs like
>SystemRescueCd which have
>choosen the installed tools to be most useful for disk
>rescues.

Since my only computer is a laptop I use my installation
USB stick (64GB) as the backup media. I make a daily
'rsync' of '/etc' and other necessities to that
USB-stick and a daily 'rsync' of '~/' to a 64GB SD-card.
I'd use the SD-card alone but the system doesn't
recognize it as a bootable device.

Frank

[Chris Vine]

The proper way is either:

a) always call /sbin/lilo immediately after installing/reinstalling a
new kernel so the boot loader knows where on the file system the kernel
image is located, or better

b) use grub2, which comes with slackware 14.1 and I think earlier
slackware versions: the grub boot loader has its own file system reader
and will find the updated kernel image for you, provided its name and
location on the file system have not changed (for
example, /boot/vmlinuz).

Chris

[Jerry Peters]

Plus with either grub2 or grub legacy you can always drop down to the
command line to find a bootable kernel or correct the kernel command
line when things get stuffed.

[Peter Chant]

On 04/08/2014 08:34 AM, Grant wrote:

> I've never used more than the install boot CD, mount the busted OS part on
> /mnt, then 'vi /mnt/etc/lilo.conf', followed by 'lilo -r /mnt', reboot.

Hmm. Not used the -r option. Have to remember that. What I used to do
was simply boot from the install disk but use my regular root filesystem
as root and rerun lilo from there.

[Peter Chant]

On 04/08/2014 06:51 AM, Henrik Carlqvist wrote:

> But the important thing is not which CD to choose, the important thing
> when rescuing disks it to know and understand what you are doing and why
> you are doing it. There are many different ways to get a broken system
> and each way needs it own solution. There is no such simple thing as
> booting a CD, pressing a button and all problems will be fixed.

I know that. But the 14.1(64) installer did not seem to give me the
option to boot to the root file system instead of it's own filesystem.

[Peter Chant]

Well, if you did not blacklist the kernel in its setup and you ran
slackpkg and did not prohibit it then you did 'let' it!