[gentoo-user] Strange behaviour with LILO on new install on old laptop

["Walter Dnes" <waltdnes@waltdnes.org>]

  I just finished installing Gentoo on an older AMD laptop.  There was
one major problem that I hacked around, and things appear to be working
OK, but I still get warnings when installing lilo.

  When I first did the install, I got the warning message...
"Could not determine root partition!".  I ran lilo and rebooted, but got
a kernel panic, because the kernel couldn't find the boot device.  I dug
into this.  Apparently the lilo ebuild tries to outsmart the user, and
figure out the root partition itself, with the bash syntax...

rootpart="$(mount | grep -v "tmpfs" | grep -v "rootfs" | grep "on / " | cut -f1 -d " ")"

I don't know if I screwed up during the install, but *IN THE CHROOT*,
mount returns a null string.  I remembered vaguely that "mount" returns
the contents of /etc/mtab.  I looked at it, and /etc/mtab was also
empty.  I applied the "rootpart=" stuff against another machine, and
found out which line it homed in on.  I manually edited /etc/mtab in
the chroot, inserting the short line...

805

...Then I emerged lilo again.  This time I got...

#####################################################################
>>> Installing (1 of 1) sys-boot/lilo-23.2-r2

 * Checking for LILO ... Yes, on /dev/sda
 * Running DOLILO to complete the install ...
You can move /etc/conf.d/dolilo.example to /etc/conf.d/dolilo and edit it to set your preferences.
fdisk: cannot open 80: No such file or directory
fdisk: cannot open 80: No such file or directory
Bootsector updated succesfully.
#####################################################################

The important part is that the laptop now boots up OK.  However, when I
re-install lilo, on the natively-booted laptop, I still get the above
messages.  I'm using the same partitioning scheme and fstab that I've
been using for years without problems.  Here they are...

outfput from "fdisk -l"
#####################################################################
Disk /dev/sda: 320.1 GB, 320072933376 bytes, 625142448 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x612cf108

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1            2048   625142447   312570200    5  Extended
/dev/sda5            4096      618495      307200   83  Linux
/dev/sda6          620544    17397759     8388608   83  Linux
/dev/sda7        17399808   625142447   303871320   83  Linux
#####################################################################

/etc/fstab
#########################################################################
/dev/sda5               /           ext2     noatime,nodiratime,async 0 1
/dev/sda7               /home       ext3     noatime,nodiratime,async 0 1
/home/bindmounts/opt    /opt        auto     bind                     0 0
/home/bindmounts/var    /var        auto     bind                     0 0
/home/bindmounts/usr    /usr        auto     bind                     0 0
/home/bindmounts/tmp    /tmp        auto     bind                     0 0
/dev/sda6               none        swap     sw                       0 0
/dev/cdrom              /mnt/cdrom  iso9660  noauto,users,ro          0 0
/dev/sr0                /mnt/dvd    auto     noauto,users,ro          0 0

devpts  /dev/pts devpts defaults 0 0
#########################################################################

  Any ideas?

-- 
Walter Dnes <waltdnes@waltdnes.org>
I don't run "desktop environments"; I run useful applications