Guest id4398 Posted August 15, 2003 Report Share Posted August 15, 2003 Hello, I am a linux newbie, i am trying to install mandrake linux on presario 2175 AMD 2400+, ATI mobility Radeon U1. I have no pcmcia cards attached. The install goes fine, it detects the vedio card. But the boot up the system hangs at "Starting PCMCIA" i tried nopcmcia bootup argument, but i still have this problem. Please help. Thanks Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
liquidzoo Posted August 15, 2003 Report Share Posted August 15, 2003 How long does it hang there? I have noticed that sometimes it just takes a little extra time, but it starts up just fine. Are you ever going to have any cards there? If not, once we get you loaded, we can disable the pcmcia startup permanently. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bvc Posted August 15, 2003 Report Share Posted August 15, 2003 Welcome! It's said you can pass nopcmcia to the kernel at boot/install. Press F1 at the first screen and for a normal install type linux nopcmcia If you're doing the expert install expert nopcmcia You could also try (I'll explain 'try' in a minute) linux pcmcia=off If you look at the kernelparameters.txt http://www.mandrakeusers.org/viewtopic.php?t=3099 you won't find nopcmcia or pcmcia anything except a 'state'discrption, AND if you google this search ( I did quickly) you won't see any success with it either......but you could try it anyway :wink: Can you turn it off in your bios? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest id4398 Posted August 15, 2003 Report Share Posted August 15, 2003 I waited for 5-7 minutes,but nothing came up, so i restarted the laptop. But the same problem, so i turned it off. Any idea how much time i should wait (like 10-15 minutes)? No i am not going to put any PCMCIA card in there. I have integrated wireless 54g (which i guess is not supported for now), so no plans to use PCMCIA slot. Any idea how to disable it, if i boot using rescue mode. Thanks Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
liquidzoo Posted August 15, 2003 Report Share Posted August 15, 2003 i would follow what bvc said and try to disable it in the bios. I think you press F1 at the initial boot-up screen to get into the bios on a Compaq. Take a look in there and see if you can find a way to turn it off. On a separate note, does this freeze happen when you are trying to boot for the install or do you already have Mandrake installed? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest id4398 Posted August 15, 2003 Report Share Posted August 15, 2003 I already have mandrake installed on the laptop. The installation went fine without any problems. It freezes at the boot time(infact the first boot). Thanks. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
liquidzoo Posted August 15, 2003 Report Share Posted August 15, 2003 Try disabling the pcmcia ports in the bios Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bvc Posted August 15, 2003 Report Share Posted August 15, 2003 You can also tell the bootloader (lilo?) nopcmcia by pressing Esc>and typing linux nopcmcia (if linux is what appears in the lilo menu). Also, do you have a card to put in to see if the prob is resolved, or if it's a irq/sys/port prob. Does it still happen if you choose failsafe ? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest id4398 Posted August 18, 2003 Report Share Posted August 18, 2003 I think this is due to bad pcmcia drivers in the kernel. As i am not using PCMCIA for now, I thought of disabling it. I was able to boot linux with PCMCIA hang at boot. following are the steps i followed 1) During bootup process, press 'I' to enter interactive mode, and DONOT START PCMCIA SERVICES 2) After logon go to MANDRAKE CONTROL CENTER and disable PCMCIA to start at boot up. Thanks for the help. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gowator Posted August 18, 2003 Report Share Posted August 18, 2003 I had the same problems with PCMIA on my laptop- I installed using no pcmcia and it still intalled the init script. The temp soln was to just rename the rc.d entries for PCMCIA. Not elegant but it works :D Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pjewett Posted December 18, 2003 Report Share Posted December 18, 2003 (edited) Is anyone still following this thread? I'm having the same problem and have tried every suggestion in this thread with the exception of editing any files with no success. I'd love to finally see what Mandrake actually looks like booted. Can anyone help? Many thanks. Edited December 18, 2003 by pjewett Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jackois Posted December 22, 2003 Report Share Posted December 22, 2003 Hi there... if it's still required, here's how I've got on so far... start your linux boot and then press escape for the verbose mode... after a short while it asks the question do you want an interactive boot? or press i for interactive boot. If you do this it's a bit like the old safe mode command prompt in windows i.e. do you want to start... press y n or c etc. Do yes for everything apart from pcmcia devices... do no for this and you'll boot up. Once boooted up go into Mandrake user centre as root, press for system options and uncheck the option to start pcmcia on boot. If you aren't using pcmcia devices there's nothing else to do... if you are, well I'm still trying to work out how to get my netgear card up and running.... :unsure: hope this helps, Jacko. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gowator Posted December 22, 2003 Report Share Posted December 22, 2003 My laptop has NEVER worked with Mandrake and PCMCIA. Itworks fine with Debian etc. but never mandrake. Also the order of the pcmcia service in andrake is useless anyway. It comes near the end so if you have a NW card etc. netowrking is already started so its too late to start PCMCIA Some pcmcia drivers work but mine won't. I disable it by (as root) chkconfig pcmcia off This is equivalent of doing it in the GUI but saves going through the whole interactive boot sequece becuase you can do it from RL 1. I honestly believe if it works then fine. If not then disable it and don't intend to use it with Mandrake. Every Debian based distro I have tried works and every Redhat based doesn't so if your card hangs I suggest a Debain based distro. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
webqwest Posted January 2, 2004 Report Share Posted January 2, 2004 So there's probably no hope for pcmcia support in Mandrake? Like how it looks and it runs well so I'd hate to have to abandon it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
haze Posted January 10, 2004 Report Share Posted January 10, 2004 I have a presario 2195.I googled this laptop before installing mandrake,so I knew not to start pcmcia.I disabled this in the installation.If it still loads pcmcia,at lilo,arrow down to single.When you get to a prompt"chkconfig --del pcmcia"Then "shutdown -r now"It should reboot fine.On this laptop(most recent presarios,I think)pcmcia works fairly well with mandrake if you edit your /etc/pcmcia/config.opts file.In the section labeled : # Resources we should not use, even if they appear to be available cut and paste this exclude irq 1 exclude irq 2 exclude irq 3 exclude irq 4 exclude irq 6 exclude irq 8 exclude irq 9 exclude irq 10 exclude irq 11 exclude irq 12 exclude irq 13 exclude irq 14 exclude irq 15 After this,you should be able to "service pcmcia start" without hanging your machine.To start on boot "chkconfig --add pcmcia" My onboard wireless card is a Broadcom Corporation BCM94306 802.11g (rev 02) Run "lspci" as root.If you have the same card,google for ndiswrapper.This driver uses your windows drivers under linux,and it comes with the 2.6.0 kernel,if you select it.After compiling,it ran fine on the stock 2.4-18mdk kernel. Some of these laptops came with a HP wlan 802.11b.If you've got that one,google for wlan-ng.It will use the prism2_pci module. I also use a smc2532w-b pcmcia card.This is a prism2 based card,necessary for running some "very interesting" applications.It uses the wlan-ng drivers. I had to recompile my kernel to get acpi to work(2.6).If anyone is interested,I'll mail them my kernel config file. Someone above mentioned that mandrake starts it's pcmcia service too late to use network cards.This is a laptop,I don't start my internet at boot anyway.Saves that annoying wait while booting if you are somewhere that you don't have access."ifup eth0 or eth1 or wlan0" works for me:-) All in all,I've been pretty happy with this laptop.I spent alot of time googling,but that's one of the reasons I run linux.Next time I buy one,I'll have a knoppix or pclinuxos cd with me to boot before I buy.It would have saved me some work. Have Fun Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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