Bug 333304

Summary:	LILO breaks if XEN kernel is present
Product:	[openSUSE] openSUSE 10.3	Reporter:	Martin Vidner <mvidner>
Component:	YaST2	Assignee:	Joachim Plack <jplack>
Status:	RESOLVED FIXED	QA Contact:	Jiri Srain <jsrain>
Severity:	Major
Priority:	P5 - None	CC:	aosthof, jplack
Version:	Final
Target Milestone:	---
Hardware:	i686
OS:	Other
See Also:	https://fate.suse.com/302908
Whiteboard:
Found By:	---	Services Priority:
Business Priority:		Blocker:	---
Marketing QA Status:	---	IT Deployment:	---

Description Martin Vidner 2007-10-12 09:27:16 UTC

I use LILO, and have kernel-default and kernel-xen. When the latest kernel update (2.6.22.9-0.4) is applied, there is an error in /var/log/YaST2/y2log_bootloader:
  Boot image: /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.22.9-0.4-xen
  Setup length is 165 sectors.
  Fatal: Setup length exceeds 31 maximum; kernel setup will overwrite boot loader

Apparently LILO cannot boot XEN unless one uses mbootpack: http://lists.xensource.com/archives/html/xen-users/2005-05/msg00230.html (or http://www.google.com/search?q=%22Setup+length+exceeds+31+maximum%22+xen )

I suggest
A) use mbootpack if we have LILO and XEN (well that may not be worth the effort)
B) or warn when one has LILO and tries to install XEN, disallowing the action, and vice versa
C) or drop LILO altogether

Also, the situation came about by gradual upgrading from SL 7.3 where LILO was the default. I was hitting this bug for some time (and did not report it nor search for the above links, which is my fault) and always solved it by removing the XEN entry (I was not using it and it was the quickest fix).

So a possible sub-bug is that update-bootloader should not re-add the XEN entry. But I realize that it might be too hard to detect/fix that situation.

Comment 2 Stefan Fent 2007-10-24 19:14:26 UTC

Could you please open a feature request for B)? (openSUSE 11.0), and close this bug (it won't be fixed for 10.3 due to lack of resources) 

As you already remarked, A) is not really a solution.
C) is already thought of by PM.

Comment 3 Martin Vidner 2007-10-25 13:29:25 UTC

OK, setting to Later and transferring to Fate.

Comment 4 Joachim Plack 2008-03-20 04:19:49 UTC

reevaluate bug for SLE11

Comment 5 Joachim Plack 2008-03-20 04:21:33 UTC

see above

Comment 6 Joachim Plack 2008-07-15 11:38:15 UTC

lilo will be dropped altogether for SLE11