boot failure after install

[feizhou at graffiti.net (Feizhou)]

Peter Farrow wrote:
> In one sentence,  grub is poorly documented, over complicated pants, and 
> lilo ROCKS...

Yeah lilo rocks when it works.

but you cannot create a lilo floppy for a server whose kernel you have 
no idea about nor does it give you a CLI that will allow you to find and 
load a kernel from the box.

poorly documented? over complicated?

I beg to differ. Commands are so simple.

1) Switch to filesystem at this location and make it root.
  root (device:part)
  you can also use tab to do command completion so typing root ([tab] 
will then give you the list of devices available and their part.
2) another command for loading a kernel image with parameters
  kernel /path/to/image parameters
  kernel (device:part)/path/to/image parameters
3) another command for loading an initrd image
  initrd /path/to/initrdimage
  initrd (device:path)/path/to/initrdimage

configuration for the boot menu is basically a grouping of the above 
commands.

And for 2) and 3) you can also use tab for command completion to find 
the kernel/initrd image files.

lilo is great when it works otherwise it is just a limited bootloader.