My Mandriva 2007 rant

[michaelcole]

Not sure if this has anything to do with it but if i start with my USB drive plugged in now days it takes longer with the lilo to load and then the kernel seems to freeze at checking directories..

 

i just unplug it until i see the interactive prompt then i have no problems..

[Gowator]

I'm now looking forward to Etch coming out.

Why don't you give it a try right now? It is imho rockin' stable already. I haven't encountered even one problem in Etch/testing yet.;)

Its pretty rare .... sometimes strange apps have deps that won't resolve but we are talking outside of the official repositories (some GIS SW called thubar is giving me a headache and it looks like I will have to compile from source) but for "normal" packages no problems more or less ever.

 

 

I agree with Gowater. This just seems to be an ongoing, continuing problem with Mandr..whatever. Now I have been a Mandrake evagelist since 7.0. My first. And I converted a couple people on different versions. But I feel 10.0 was the last version I trusted. Granted it had issues with the printer driver for my Laserjet 5 but I could work around it.

I have to disagree ;) no seriously yes that is correct but Mandriva can be a fine distro for n00bs especially when it works on your hardware ...

I underlined when because its a bit of a two parter.... that is it might work on one version and then stop... something I never saw on Debian ever. (Excepting very strange arches like SPARC->USPARCII which is basically a 32-64 bit change....)

 

The only problems with unstable/testing are sometimes not all deps are released at once or noted.

The most common is upgrading KDE components .. some library gets upgraded then something usually stops working, if your confident at sorting this sort of thing out (open a different WM) and upgrade all KDE or lock the lib into the old version for a few days (literally, it can be a day or perhaps 3) while the rest filters through then go for it.

 

Im using a mix of testing and unstable ... 99% unstable but I have perhaps 3-4 pinned packages

 

My GF had Mandriva 10 and when her PC wouldn't work with 10.1 (or was it 10.2) I installed Debian and the same install is running in current testing/unstable today... after several dist-upgrades. The only thing ever broken was the scanner support... I needed the scanner and its in her room so I just used the live CD... after I did what I needed I just dist-upgraded and it worked after a reboot into the new kernel...

Again the machines are rarely rebooted ... only for kernel upgrades and vacations (though the server keeps running 24x7x365 and the only time its been rebooted is for phyicially cleaning the machine fans out

 

Like cage47 I was a Mandr* evangelist and converted a lot of people and this inconsistency of HW support is what stopped me. On more than one occaision i had to mess about just trying to keep mandriva current ..

especially over releases ... and its embarassing (to say the least )when you simply can't get the current distro release to work with their hardware when the last one did.

 

Again I never had this with Debian and I can install a mixed testing/unstable in 12 minutes on a fast PC and 30 on a slow one...(using kanotix) which Im not saying is the best way to install but for instance installing on my GF's fathers PC it meant I could install in about 15 mins and be able to show him the basics while its installing. We are talking someone here who's computer literacy is on a level to find * for dummies as imposing reads... and yet he has had zero probs (excepting running the PC in 45C in the heatwave, heck it was a €200 PC, i was in Italy and we still fixed it ... just take the case off and put a fan blowing on it)

 

Actually it was a bit like the classic power cut BOFH type thing... it was a lot cooler in Rome at the time and when he told me he couldn't go crawling under the tables since it was 45C I almost split my sides

 

What's the sad thing?

Well I guess its <<Le marketing>> (the french don't actually have a word for marketing and mandriva illustrate this all to well)

Mandriva attract n00bs and then when the n00bs need to upgrade they are no longer n00bs so when the next version just doesn't work you need to be a dedicated Mandr* user to stick at it.

 

Like cage47 I started with Mandrake 7 (switching from RH) and through to 9.x everything was fine.

Then when it got so I couldn't upgrade on some comps I just stopped usig mandriva as a "primary distro".

By primary distro I mean I don't have windows ... I *need* my linux to work ... if it doesn't work then I can't work .. I don't dual boot into Windows or even have windows except as a vmware session for OCR...

[AussieJohn]

Well I did try my idea and it failed the same way as it did when I used the 2.6.17 kernel from cooker, namely it stopped and froze at the same point in bootup ang gave a message that it was doing as shown in the screen picture.

So yes it does seem to be caused by the kernel or at least Mandrivas' tweaking of it.

 

Cheers. John.

[Gowator]

Have you looked what comes next i the boot sequence after the DISABLE IRQ stuff?

I wonder if its something that they compiled a module in but its also trying to load as a module?

My laptop used to do a similar thing with some mandriva kernels and disabling PCMCIA as a module worked because it was also already loaded in the kernel? (wrong PCMCIA module as I remember, ie it was for a diferrent chipset)

Could be something similar.. from the looks of it its still in the 'kernel interacting with BIOS phase' and loading HW (as you suspected) ??

[AussieJohn]

Hello Gowater.

 

Nothing comes after that point. It just stays there. I have left it for as long as half an hour.

 

Cheers and thanks for still taking an interest and making suggestions ( thanks to all others as well). John

[ianw1974]

I'm wondering if this is being caused by your firewire card. Have you attempted booting with this disabled, or even removed from the system to see if it makes a difference.

 

Just a thought I had.....

[Gowator]

Hello Gowater.

 

Nothing comes after that point. It just stays there. I have left it for as long as half an hour.

 

Cheers and thanks for still taking an interest and making suggestions ( thanks to all others as well). John

:D

What Im thinking though is sometimes the last message you see is not the one causing the problem..especially with modules loading because sometimes they freeze the system before it puts them on the screen or even the /var/log/messages...

 

So if you check your /etc/rc.d directories and work out what the last thing on the screen is then check what starts next you can just comment it out (just rename S_ to anything except K_ ) and give it a try?

[cage47]

Gowater. I've always been more on the stability side than the bleeding edge. That's why I can handle Debian's older packages. If i need something recent I can find it and install it or upgrade it. But being on a lowly dailup it's painful to do a net install, or upgrade. And I'm not big on upgrades on my main system. I usually like to test distros out on my laptop (A toshiba 4080xcdt) with a backup hard drive. If it works on that it'll work on my other systems. So it works for me to have the acutal cd's. And I usually only go with stable cd's not testing. I didn't even get my Mandriva 2006 cd's until March.

 

Aussie. I was wondering something. On my system irq 14 is reserved for the hard drive controller. If your irq 14 is being disabled could it be disabling your hard drive in the process? It could be a symptom of your firewire card but actually affecting the hd controller? I had an old sound card that did that in my 486 days.

[pmpatrick]

AussieJohn, have you tried passing any boot parameters with the misbehaving kernel? I would at least try booting with the usual:

 

noapic nolapic acpi=off

 

It would be truly ironic if the problem was with acpi in the new kernel as that would bring us back to ianw's original problem.

[Guest gizmoarena]

when i downloaded mandriva 2007 free for the first time, i installed it on my 20GB PATA drive [used entire disk option]. someday later, i plugged in my master SATA drive. and mandriva stopped working.

 

is it because of the status of the drives [primary master / secondary master]? is there any way of fixing this?

 

well now i'm using mandriva on my SATA drive with dual booting. and its working perfectly.

[ianw1974]

Well, coming back to the acpi thing, I've got a fix for it now - has taken a long time but I finally got one.

 

Change your /etc/lilo.conf or /boot/grub/grub.conf (or menu.lst) and add the following parameters:

 

acpi=off apm=on apm=power-off

 

Make sure apm is installed:

 

rpm -qa | grep apm

 

and the service enabled:

 

chkconfig --list | grep apm

 

it should be "on" against runlevels 3 and 5 at least. It now shuts down fine.

[AussieJohn]

Hear Ye, Hear Ye, Hear Ye.

 

I have solved it at last. And this only applys to PCs, I think, and not to Laptops for obvious reasons.

 

It was solved by lots of experimentation.

 

Step 1.

If you are using a similar board to the ASUS A7V600-X that uses the same bios, in the BOOT UP part of the bios it has an item titled INTERRUPT MODE and the default is set to [ PIC ]. It must be changed to [ APIC ].

Make certain that the item titled PLUG-n-PLAY is set at [ NO ] and not [ YES ].

 

Step 2.

When you insert the install cd/DVD and the boot screen starts running it will show you an initial menu.

Select the heading INSTALLATION, by using the down arrow key but do NOT press the Enter button, i.e. only highlight INSTALLATION.

Type in the following :- pci=nomsi

You will see the text appear at the bottom of the screen. Using the left and right keys, use the backspace key (delete) to delete acpi=ht and nolapic and noapic.

 

Step 3.

Now hit the Enter key. You should now be able to do the install.

When you are doing your packages selection you will need to make sure that you do not select anything to do with apic or acpi or apic etc.

 

Step 4.

A very important step is this one.

During the settings procedures later in the Post install phase, setting up the bootloader, it is important that you go in to the boot settings and make sure that there is only splash=silent (this not critical) and pci=nomsi (this is absolutely critical) or you will not be able to reboot successfully.

 

I found that any single addition in Step 2. and it would not work to enable install and any other additions in the bootloader GRUB and you could not boot up either. I assure you I tried every combination but the initial inspiration was the ERRATA.

 

You are reading this from Mandriva 2007 (but I am keeping my Mandriva 2006 still on my First SATA HD for a lengthy period until I am satisfied with 2007). :D

 

Cheers. John

[Gowator]

Aussie John....

HURRAY..... Im sure that will help a LOT of people...

 

 

Gowater. I've always been more on the stability side than the bleeding edge. That's why I can handle Debian's older packages. If i need something recent I can find it and install it or upgrade it. But being on a lowly dailup it's painful to do a net install, or upgrade. And I'm not big on upgrades on my main system. I usually like to test distros out on my laptop (A toshiba 4080xcdt) with a backup hard drive. If it works on that it'll work on my other systems. So it works for me to have the acutal cd's. And I usually only go with stable cd's not testing. I didn't even get my Mandriva 2006 cd's until March.

 

cage47 ... I would put it this way .... I wouldn't except in extreme circumstances run stable just for stability... (by extreme I mean server :D or really critical ) because unstable/testing is pretty damned stable... certainly IMHO as stable as any mandriva in recent years...

 

HOWEVER your assertion about dial-up is a very good reason IMHO. Updates for stable are very few and usually only security so if bandwidth is a problem your pretty much assured very few needed downloads.

 

I spent 6 months or more with no phone at all a few years back (whereas I now have a 22Mbit dload) an dit makes a hige difference :D

[AussieJohn]

After reading back through this thread I realise that quite a number of you made a large number of suggestions which although on their own did not solve the problem, they ALL gave me little pointers to think about when all taken together.

For that I thank everyone immensely.

The only thing I couldn't compute was where anyone thought I had a Firewire card, which indeed I have but I don't recall ever mentioning it. :D

 

Cheers. John.

[arctic]

Thanks for sharing your wisdom, John. I guess dozens of people will appreciate it. Well done!