System freeze during boot sequence

[Ixthusdan]

This problem started when I changed from the 2.4.19-6mdk kernel to the 2.4.20-2mdk kernel. At boot time, from a cold machine, the boot sequence freezes at

 

loading compose keys: compose.latin.inc

 

Since not enough of the system is loaded to do anything, I have to power off and back on in order to recover. I get one warning that the log is started again, but that is the only problem after the failure, as the machine loads fine after the re-start. If the machine is running, this problem does not occur. Only if the machine is cold.

 

I suspect a hardware problem, but the kernel change is what manifested it. I have run diagnostics on the ram, the processor, and the chipset from both linux and windows, with no errors.

 

Hardware details:

Epox mb KT133 chipset

256MB sdram @ 100Mhz

Athlon (of course!) 1G running 200Mhz fsb

GForce2 GTS

20G Maxtor with 12G windows, remaining root, home, and swap linux partitions, 4G Maxtor with usr partition

cdrw, cdrom

SB live

Realtek nic

on board audio is turned off in the bios.

This machine has ran Mandrake 8.0, 8.1, 8.2, 9.0, redhat 8, turbolinux, and others without any problems.

 

So, any ideas?

[DragonMage]

Well, it is a cooker kernel after all.. Looking at the cooker mailing list archives, it seems that there are a few patches out for that particular kernel, even though they are not incorporated in the current kernel yet as the date of the file is still Dec 9.

 

So there is probably nothing wrong with your machine, just the cooker mandrake kernel is not patched perfectly yet. Incidentally, I run the same kernel and find some quirks in there too. Something about ldm_validate_partition_table(): Disk read failed.

I/O error: dev 08:00, sector 0

but since everything works fine, I don't worry about it <knock on wood>