Ranting: Linux Fails Me Once Again

I've used Linux on and off for almost 4 years and feeling the desire to write some linux applications, I installed Debian, which I've done a hundred times.

Spent a couple of days writing code in Kdevelop, getting the kernel recompiled to use SMP, and etc...Everything was going as it should.......Works fine for a couple of days! Until suddenly today all i get is 'LI' (and hangs) when LILO tries to start - This is the same thing it did about 2 years ago using 'Potato' when it had that crappy version of LILO that couldn't address hard drives with more than 1023 cylinders (or whatever that god-forsaken magic number was).

Why O why must some things about linux (read: lilo breaking for no reason) be so half-assed?

The moral of the story: LILO suddenly stops working for no good reason, forcing me to bring up an XP rescue prompt and run FIXMBR just so I can get XP to boot so I can type this rant.

Perhaps someday I'll fix it. Maybe I'll just use Windows for a while. I'll try Linux again next year and see if it works a little better (probably won't).

Do keep us posted, will you?

LILO doesn't just fail, it's not finding your boot image. There are a number of things that could cause this,

1) The partition table of your disk changed or corrupted 2) The boot order of your disks was changed 3) /boot got corrupted 4) You blew away something in /boot when you built a new kernel

You should be able to figure this out pretty easily given your level of

That was a low blow. <g>

LILO doesn't break for no reason. Most likely problem: when you built and installed the new kernel, you failed to re-run LILO to rewrite the boot block with the location of the new kernel. Things continued to work for a while, but eventually file activity overwrote the blocks on disk the old kernel occupied and things broke. Second most likely: you have a multi-boot system, and Windows did something nasty to the MBR that damaged LILO.

The second there's not much you can do about except rewrite things from a boot floppy. The first is why I switched to GRUB, which knows enough about filesystems that it doesn't need rerun every time I install a new

I wasn't being facetious. The OP uses Debian, which is a distribution favored by developers, he does kernel builds and he's writing applications. Clearly he's not a newbie who just fell off of the Microsoft turnip truck, he is someone who knows his way around an operating system. Someone with his skills should be able to fix a problem like this, a problem that probably arose precisly because he was doing things that only a skilled Linux user should be doing like building and installing kernels and debugging code.

But apparently he wasn't able to boot from a debian cd...

Have you tried any other distros? Limiting oneself to a single distro greatly diminishes the Linux experience, IMhO.

The OP has found the distro which best suits him/her and should continue to use it - Windows.

He doesn't say if he even tried to boot from a Debian cd.

On closer inspection of the original post it looks like the poster is not a regular Linux user but rather someone who periodically gives it a try until he runs into something he doesn't understand and the goes running back to Windoze for a year or so before sticking his toe in the water again. The OP should try one of the friendlier distributions like Redhat. Debian isn't the distribution of choice for any but the most experienced

it takes all of two minutes to boot off a floppy and reinstall lilo

even though i'm a linux newbie who still uses windows most of the time

i always make sure i have a bootdisk..