VeeDubb Posted April 27, 2003 Author Report Share Posted April 27, 2003 YEah, I'd like to upgrade, even have a thread going looking for modo reccomendations, but that's a lot of bread for a college student living on student loans. Unemployment is REALY high in my area and nobody wants to hire someone with a class schedule to work around. And, nobody wants to buy a $2500 cusotm computer when the economy is down and the unempolyment rate is up. So, I'm basiacly out of luck for now. Maybe later this week I will dismantle my case and swap some drives around, but for now, I think I'm going to just keep looking for a way to make this work. I know none of my hardware should stop me from running linux, I've done it before, jsut something about this particular distro/release. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
afunke Posted April 28, 2003 Report Share Posted April 28, 2003 It is difficult to find an explanation to the problem without have a more verbose output of the booting kernel (before boot.log is written). It may be that the kernel can't mount the disk, and so it would hang. But Mandrake installs the kernel with the "quiet" option on, which makes us think that "Init 2.83 booting" is the last thing that the kernel did, when the error might be elsewere. So, if you can, please press ESC at the boot menu, and enter the following command to turn off the quiet (non-verbose boot) option: linux quiet=off Then look for possible error messages during the kernel boot process (before the disk is mounted or any failed mount attempts). Andreas Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bvc Posted April 28, 2003 Report Share Posted April 28, 2003 have you tried booting to CD1> F1 at the splash screen> type rescue <Enter>> choose Mount your partitions under /mnt> choose Go to console> type chroot /mnt <Enter>> cd /var/log <Enter>> ls <Enter>> and then use vi to look at the logs? One of the kernel logs should have some info. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
VeeDubb Posted April 28, 2003 Author Report Share Posted April 28, 2003 Okay this is my most recent attempt. I used partiotn magic to do the following: 1. Secure erase my linux partitions. (writes zeros to the entire partition) 2. move my windows partition to the end of the drive. I then installed 9.0 gain from the retail CD's in expert mode, but let it auto allocate the partitions for me. It created 2 or 3 journaled partitions and a small swap. This was all in the hope the it was the western digital error. THis had no real effect, except that I no longer need to enter 'ide=nodma' when that didn't work, I tried to chroot to the log directory and view boot.log. It was there, but it was still blank. I checked all the other fiels there, and most were blank and the others didn't have anything that looked like errors. I also tried linux quiet=off, but it had no effect. I know it's hard to diagnose a computer that won't boot at all that you can't put you hands on, but I want you all to know that i truely deeply appreciate all the help you've given. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
VeeDubb Posted April 28, 2003 Author Report Share Posted April 28, 2003 Also, if it would be helpfull, I have a copy of knoppix, (linux that runs direct from the CD) that I can boot up any time I want. It runs a similar kernel, not the same one but similar. It's technicaly a debian system, but maybe it could help if you knew what to look for. If you want, just let me know and I'd be happy to throw it in and see. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
afunke Posted April 28, 2003 Report Share Posted April 28, 2003 Yes, with knoppix, you may open a console window, then type sudo su (just in case, you'll become root), then cd /mnt ls (locate the likely root partition at the fixed disk, whose mount point is probably already provided by knoppix , like /mnt/hda5), then mount it: mount /mnt/hda5 cd /mnt/hda5/var/log/kernel vi warnings (quit with :q) vi errors vi info Andreas Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
VeeDubb Posted April 28, 2003 Author Report Share Posted April 28, 2003 I actualy looked at both of those allready, no useful information at all. I'll take another look with knoppic just in case. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
VeeDubb Posted April 28, 2003 Author Report Share Posted April 28, 2003 checked them all again through knoppix as root just like I did udner a rescue boot from CD1 and they are all 3 totaly blank. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Steve Scrimpshire Posted April 28, 2003 Report Share Posted April 28, 2003 It's the MoBo problem. And you are going to get no useful information from boot.log or messages or dmesg. Here is what polemicz sent me (a user with the same MoBo): Steve,I finally got around to playing with my Gateway system and getting 9.0 on it. So far I have run it with 8.2 and kernel 2.4.18. I was able to get 9.0 running on it, but not as simply as the alt2 install of 8.2. What I first did was create a 2.2.20-9.1mdk boot floppy. I then installed 9.0 and tried to boot, but got a kernel panic as it was mounting file systems. I figured it was a Reiser problem even though my 8.2 system runs fine with Reiser. I reinstalled 9.0 using Ext3 and tried to boot. It booted up and from there I dl'd the 2.4.20 kernel and rebuilt it. It then booted without problem into 2.4.20 with mdk 9.0. Even with the supposedly slower gcc 3.2 the whole build on my 700 Mhz system took less than 20 minutes (256 ram). You ought to give it a try, but if you are using Reiser as I was you will have to do some backups of data. Good luck and thanks again for the help you gave me in the past. John If you can boot with Knoppix, you can recompile the MDK 2.4.x kernel from the CD and do NOT use their .config file. The problem is in the configuration somewhere, not the actual kernel. Then you can make a boot disk with that kernel for after install and then install that kernel image and System.map in MDK's /boot and edit lilo.conf if you need to. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
VeeDubb Posted April 28, 2003 Author Report Share Posted April 28, 2003 So what you are saying is, boot into knoppix, get the kernel soure off the sources CD, and recompile it for my sytem, manualy building a new .config file? At the risk of sounding like an idiot, I have no idea how to do that. Some simple explanation might help. Also, if you or anybody knows the problem in the .config file, maybe I could just change that? The last time I tried to make a kernel myself, went very baly, though I was going to need to recompile anyway because I have to make a slight change to one of the usb drivers in the kernel to get my pocke PC to sync. So anyway, if anyone could post explicit directions on how to do that, I would be eternaly greatfull as I have NO IDEA, and would lieky do more harm than good. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Steve Scrimpshire Posted April 28, 2003 Report Share Posted April 28, 2003 I do not know exactly what in the config file causes the problem, though I have been searching hard to find it. The only thing I can tell you is this: cd to where the sources are (usually /usr/src/linux) and do this (as root) (anything inside [ ] are comments or instructions): make mrproper make xconfig [if you are doing this in X, else it is make menuconfig...just click the 'help' button for everything and take your time. Make sure you click 'Save and exit' when you are done and you may want to save the config to a file also for backup] make dep && make bzImage && make modules && make modules_install cd arch/i386/boot mkinitrd initrd-[kernel-version-number like 2.4.20].img [kernel version number] [an example of the above command would be mkinitrd initrd-2.4.20.img 2.4.20] cp bzImage /boot/vmlinuz-[kernel-version number] cp initrd-[kernel-version number].img /boot cd /usr/src/linux cp System.map /boot/System.map-[kernel-version number] Then edit lilo.conf to add the vmlinuz and initrd and save it and then run /sbin/lilo -v and reboot If it'll help, here is my .config file, you can copy and paste it to a file and save it as .config and then copy it to /usr/src/linux after you do make mrproper and just go through and double-check everything when you do make xconfig. Our systems should be very similar, but I cannot guarantee you mine will work for you: Right click this link and choose Save as and save it as .config in your /hom/veedubb directory and copy it to /usr/src/linux as root: http://omarserenity.com/.config Once again, I take no responsibility for the effect this .config file may have, but it works on mine. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
VeeDubb Posted April 28, 2003 Author Report Share Posted April 28, 2003 Once again, I take no responsibility for the effect this .config file may have, but it works on mine. LOL, It's not like a have a running system to damage. hopefully this will get me going. Isomehoe doubt it, but I'll give it a try. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
VeeDubb Posted April 28, 2003 Author Report Share Posted April 28, 2003 Also, how do I unpack the RPM on a debian system? Knoppix is, after all, debian. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Steve Scrimpshire Posted April 28, 2003 Report Share Posted April 28, 2003 Hmmmm.....do you have internet access with knoppix? You can download a 2.4.20 kernel from kernel.org in *.tar.gz or *.tar.bz2 format...dunno about installing rpms on debian. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Steve Scrimpshire Posted April 28, 2003 Report Share Posted April 28, 2003 Once again, I take no responsibility for the effect this .config file may have, but it works on mine. LOL, It's not like a have a running system to damage. hopefully this will get me going. Isomehoe doubt it, but I'll give it a try. Oh, ye of little faith. :wink: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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