[SOLVED] mageia 2 won't boot

[jmjlinux586]

Hello,
I updated to mageia 2 using urpmi.
Now it won't boot.
I get a lilo screen and I go to
mageia 2 on the right side
and it says loading mageia 2 but all i get is
a blinking cursor.
How can I fix this???
I am writing this from a mageia 1 live cd.

[jmjlinux586]

nevermind.

[Rob_T]

Same problem here. What was the solution?

[Rob_T]

In my case in turned out to be that the initrd was bigger than lilo can handle. Switching to grub got my system working.

Nearly bricked another system with the same issuem where I was unable to install grub. Eventually got the system up far enough to be able to use "dracut -f" to produce a smaller initrd.

[leif]

My system also refuses to boot after upgrade to Mageia 2. I use lilo and it could be a lilo-related issue in my case. I have tried to reinstall lilo in rescue mode without success. Switching to grub could perhaps solve my problem

After my first upgrade of Mageia, I also tried to re-upgrade using the installation DVD. Unfortunately, it only gives me the option to configure lilo as boot loader since I used lilo in Mageia 1. I cannot choose grub here.

How do I install the bootloader with grub in rescue mode? I have no experience with grub.

[Rob_T]

The way I got grub onto my system was to run through an upgrade using a DVD - upgrading Mageia 2 to Mageia 2, It only takes a few minutes (because there is virtually nothing to do), then in the post install configuration configure the boot loader to use grub. (Click on the bootloader configuration button to get started...).

One of my systems uses RAID for everything, grub is not even offered as a bootloader choice for that system...

BTW, if you see anything at all after "Loading Linux" then it's not the problem I found (the next message should be something about checking BIOS data, my systems didn't even get to that).

[leif]

I also tried to upgrade Mageia 2 to Mageia 2 using the DVD, but I can only configure lilo. I don't get the option to select grub instead.

Did you select any other installation/upgrade option? I used the default graphic installation.

[Rob_T]

On the computer I was able to fix easily I did nothing special, grub was listed in the configuration as a choice alongside lilo.

Try using "rescue" mode from the DVD. Mount the file systems then start a shell. then do

chroot /mnt
dracut -f
lilo

As best as I remember, that's what I did to fix the system that wouldn't let me switch to grub.