Mandrake 9.1 will not boot

[Guest jgar]

I am a new linux user and have never used it before. I have installed Mandrake 9.1 on a Windows98 system with the hardware below:

 

CPU Type Intel Pentium MMX, 233 MHz

Motherboard Chipset Intel Triton 82430TX

System Memory 64 MB (EDO)

BIOS Type Award Modular (05/19/97)

Video Adapter Matrox MGA Mystique

Audio Adapter Creative SB AWE32 Audio Adapter

Floppy Drive GENERIC NEC FLOPPY DISK

Disk Drive GENERIC IDE DISK TYPE46

Optical Drive ATAPI CD-ROM DRIVE

Optical Drive Traxdata CDRW2260+

Modem Lucent Win Modem

 

The installation was completed OK, but linux will not boot. The boot goes OK until it gets to a line that has

 

hdd: Traxdata CDRW2260+,ATAPI CD-ROM DRIVE

 

and then stops. I can boot with the installation disk and then type in rescue and get a command prompt but I do not know how to fix the problem. I know the hardware is a bit old but I just want to see how Linux goes before I buy a new laptop.

 

Any help would be much appreciated.

[mtweidmann]

I can nothing in your specification that should makde Linux fall over. Something worth trying, if you haven't already, is boot using the failsafe option. Its a bit like safe mode in Windows, and even if it won't boot it might give your more info.

[chris z]

it's weird that it's tripping up on your cd rom drives. does it just stop booting & hang there, or is there an error message? if there's a message, please post the message, exactly as it reads. the "old" hardware, as you put it, shouldn't be an issue. something else is going on there. were there any problems/errors during the install? did it have any trouble with mount points during install? like MT said, try failsafe. it may get you booted, or you'd at least get some more specific output as to what's causing the boot failure.

Chris

[Ixthusdan]

Out of curiosity, what are the drive settings in your bios, and did you turn off plug and play?

[bvc]

Trying to use dma and hanging maybe? Ay the lilo bootloader menu, pess F1 and type;

linux ide=nodma <and hit Enter>

and see if it'll boot.

 

You can try to view the logs by booting to recsue mode and selecting 'mount your partitions under /mnt' and then 'Go to Console'. Then type;

chroot /mnt

vi /var/log/messages

or

dmesg

and look for probs.

 

...and welcome to the board :)

[Guest jgar]

Thanks for the replies.

 

I tried to boot in failsafe but it did the same. It just stops at that line and hangs, there are no error messages. There were no problems during the install.

 

The drive settings in the BIOS are :

 

Primary Master

type user

size 3497

cyls 847

head 128

precomp 0

landz 6780

sector 63

mode LDA

 

and I did not turn off plug and play.

 

I tried to use "linux ide=nodma" but it hung up at the same point as before.

 

The output from the dmesg command is as follows:

 

Linux version 2.4.21-0.13mdkBOOT (quintela@bi.mandrakesoft.com) (gcc version 3.2.2 (Mandrake Linux 9.1 3.2.2-3mdk)) #1 Fri Mar 7 03:53:15 CET 2003

BIOS-provided physical RAM map:

BIOS-e820: 0000000000000000 - 00000000000a0000 (usable)

BIOS-e820: 00000000000f0000 - 0000000000100000 (reserved)

BIOS-e820: 0000000000100000 - 0000000004000000 (usable)

BIOS-e820: 00000000ffff0000 - 0000000100000000 (reserved)

64MB LOWMEM available.

ACPI: have wakeup address 0xc0001000

On node 0 totalpages: 16384

zone(0): 4096 pages.

zone(1): 12288 pages.

zone(2): 0 pages.

Kernel command line: initrd=cdrom.rdz ramdisk_size=128000 root=/dev/ram3 automatic=method:cdrom acpi=off rescue rw BOOT_IMAGE=vmlinuz

No local APIC present or hardware disabled

Initializing CPU#0

Detected 233.866 MHz processor.

Console: colour VGA+ 80x25

Calibrating delay loop... 466.94 BogoMIPS

Memory: 62376k/65536k available (923k kernel code, 2776k reserved, 250k data, 104k init, 0k highmem)

Dentry cache hash table entries: 8192 (order: 4, 65536 bytes)

Inode cache hash table entries: 4096 (order: 3, 32768 bytes)

Mount cache hash table entries: 512 (order: 0, 4096 bytes)

Buffer-cache hash table entries: 4096 (order: 2, 16384 bytes)

Page-cache hash table entries: 16384 (order: 4, 65536 bytes)

Intel Pentium with F0 0F bug - workaround enabled.

CPU: After generic, caps: 008001bf 00000000 00000000 00000000

CPU: Common caps: 008001bf 00000000 00000000 00000000

CPU: Intel Pentium MMX stepping 03

Checking 'hlt' instruction... OK.

Checking for popad bug... OK.

POSIX conformance testing by UNIFIX

ACPI: Subsystem revision 20030122

ACPI: Disabled via command line (acpi=off)

PCI: PCI BIOS revision 2.10 entry at 0xfb150, last bus=0

PCI: Using configuration type 1

PCI: Probing PCI hardware

PCI: ACPI tables contain no PCI IRQ routing entries

PCI: Probing PCI hardware (bus 00)

Limiting direct PCI/PCI transfers.

Linux NET4.0 for Linux 2.4

Based upon Swansea University Computer Society NET3.039

Initializing RT netlink socket

Starting kswapd

Detected PS/2 Mouse Port.

RAMDISK driver initialized: 16 RAM disks of 128000K size 1024 blocksize

Uniform Multi-Platform E-IDE driver Revision: 7.00beta-2.4

ide: Assuming 33MHz system bus speed for PIO modes; override with idebus=xx

PIIX4: IDE controller at PCI slot 00:07.1

PIIX4: chipset revision 1

PIIX4: not 100% native mode: will probe irqs later

ide0: BM-DMA at 0xf000-0xf007, BIOS settings: hda:pio, hdb:pio

ide1: BM-DMA at 0xf008-0xf00f, BIOS settings: hdc:pio, hdd:pio

hda: FUJITSU MPA3035ATU, ATA DISK drive

blk: queue c02674e0, I/O limit 4095Mb (mask 0xffffffff)

hdc: , ATAPI CD/DVD-ROM drive

hdd: Traxdata CDRW2260+, ATAPI CD/DVD-ROM drive

ide0 at 0x1f0-0x1f7,0x3f6 on irq 14

ide1 at 0x170-0x177,0x376 on irq 15

hda: task_no_data_intr: status=0x51 { DriveReady SeekComplete Error }

hda: task_no_data_intr: error=0x04 { DriveStatusError }

hda: 6835952 sectors (3500 MB), CHS=847/128/63, UDMA(33)

Partition check:

hda: hda1 hda2 < hda5 hda6 hda7 >

NET4: Linux TCP/IP 1.0 for NET4.0

IP Protocols: ICMP, UDP, TCP

IP: routing cache hash table of 512 buckets, 4Kbytes

TCP: Hash tables configured (established 4096 bind 8192)

NET4: Unix domain sockets 1.0/SMP for Linux NET4.0.

RAMDISK: Compressed image found at block 0

Freeing initrd memory: 554k freed

VFS: Mounted root (ext2 filesystem).

hdc: ATAPI 20X CD-ROM drive, 120kB Cache, DMA

Uniform CD-ROM driver Revision: 3.12

hdd: ATAPI 6X CD-ROM CD-R/RW drive, 768kB Cache, DMA

ISO 9660 Extensions: RRIP_1991A

VFS: Mounted root (ext2 filesystem).

Trying to move old root to /initrd ... failed

Unmounting old root

Trying to free ramdisk memory ... failed

Freeing unused kernel memory: 104k freed

inserting floppy driver for 2.4.21-0.13mdkBOOT

Floppy drive(s): fd0 is 1.44M

FDC 0 is a post-1991 82077

Journalled Block Device driver loaded

SGI XFS snapshot 2.4.20-2003-01-14_00:43_UTC with no debug enabled

loop: loaded (max 8 devices)

SCSI subsystem driver Revision: 1.00

usb.c: registered new driver usbdevfs

usb.c: registered new driver hub

usb-uhci.c: $Revision: 1.275 $ time 04:08:43 Mar 7 2003

usb-uhci.c: High bandwidth mode enabled

usb-uhci.c: USB UHCI at I/O 0x6300, IRQ 11

usb-uhci.c: Detected 2 ports

usb.c: new USB bus registered, assigned bus number 1

hub.c: USB hub found

hub.c: 2 ports detected

usb-uhci.c: USB UHCI at I/O 0x6400, IRQ 10

usb-uhci.c: Detected 2 ports

usb.c: new USB bus registered, assigned bus number 2

hub.c: USB hub found

hub.c: 2 ports detected

usb-uhci.c: v1.275:USB Universal Host Controller Interface driver

usb.c: registered new driver keyboard

usbkbd.c: :USB HID Boot Protocol keyboard driver

VFS: Can't find ext3 filesystem on dev ide1(22,0).

VFS: Can't find ext2 filesystem on dev ide1(22,0).

read_super_block: can't find a reiserfs filesystem on (dev 16:00, block 64, size 1024)

read_super_block: can't find a reiserfs filesystem on (dev 16:00, block 8, size 1024)

XFS: bad magic number

XFS: SB validate failed

VFS: Can't find ext3 filesystem on dev ide1(22,64).

VFS: Can't find ext2 filesystem on dev ide1(22,64).

read_super_block: can't find a reiserfs filesystem on (dev 16:40, block 64, size 1024)

read_super_block: can't find a reiserfs filesystem on (dev 16:40, block 8, size 1024)

XFS: bad magic number

XFS: SB validate failed

VFS: Can't find ext3 filesystem on dev ide0(3,0).

VFS: Can't find ext2 filesystem on dev ide0(3,0).

read_super_block: can't find a reiserfs filesystem on (dev 03:00, block 64, size 1024)

read_super_block: can't find a reiserfs filesystem on (dev 03:00, block 8, size 1024)

XFS: bad magic number

XFS: SB validate failed

VFS: Can't find ext3 filesystem on dev ide0(3,1).

VFS: Can't find ext2 filesystem on dev ide0(3,1).

read_super_block: can't find a reiserfs filesystem on (dev 03:01, block 64, size 1024)

read_super_block: can't find a reiserfs filesystem on (dev 03:01, block 8, size 1024)

XFS: bad magic number

XFS: SB validate failed

attempt to access beyond end of device

03:02: rw=0, want=2, (=0x2), limit=1

EXT3-fs: unable to read superblock

attempt to access beyond end of device

03:02: rw=0, want=2, (=0x2), limit=1

EXT2-fs: unable to read superblock

attempt to access beyond end of device

03:02: rw=0, want=65, (=0x41), limit=1

read_super_block: bread failed (dev 03:02, block 64, size 1024)

attempt to access beyond end of device

03:02: rw=0, want=9, (=0x9), limit=1

read_super_block: bread failed (dev 03:02, block 8, size 1024)

attempt to access beyond end of device

03:02: rw=0, want=4, (=0x4), limit=1

XFS: bad magic number

XFS: SB validate failed

attempt to access beyond end of device

03:02: rw=0, want=36, (=0x24), limit=1

attempt to access beyond end of device

03:02: rw=0, want=64, (=0x40), limit=1

kjournald starting. Commit interval 5 seconds

EXT3 FS 2.4-0.9.19, 19 August 2002 on ide0(3,5), internal journal

EXT3-fs: recovery complete.

EXT3-fs: mounted filesystem with ordered data mode.

kjournald starting. Commit interval 5 seconds

EXT3 FS 2.4-0.9.19, 19 August 2002 on ide0(3,7), internal journal

EXT3-fs: recovery complete.

EXT3-fs: mounted filesystem with ordered data mode.

[Ixthusdan]

You need to run a disk utility on your drive. There may be some bad blocks. I think that part of the system cannot be read from the drive.

[bvc]

:shock: a google search

looks to me that the prob starts here

Unmounting old root

Trying to free ramdisk memory ... failed

Anything strange at install? Did you do an expert install and partition yourself? If so, can you give any details on the partition setup?

[Guest jgar]

The installation went fine. I have installed it 3 times and it was OK each time. I didnt do an expert installation, I let the installation do the partitioning and set the windows drive to about 1G so Linux should have over 2G. I ran scandisk over the drive before the first installation but I will run it again and see what happens.

[Ixthusdan]

Be sure to run it in thorough mode.

[Guest jgar]

Ok I have found the problem, I have a PCI to USB card installed and this seems to be the problem. When I take the card out Linux will boot and when I put it back in it will not boot.

 

Thanks for everybodys help.

[pmpatrick]

It might be an irq conflict. Try putting your card in a different slot if you have one available. Also, in your previous post you stated that you did NOT turn off plug and play in the bios. I don't know if that's a typo, but you should have plug and play disabled in the bios for linux; it can cause all kinds of problems.

[AussieJohn]

Hi. I am willing to bet that NOT having DISABLED Plug n Play is the cause of the problem. This is emphasised by the removing of the PCI-USB card removing the problem.

 

The first and MOST Important rule BEFORE installing any LINUX OS is :-

 

DISABLE plug n play IN THE BIOS.

 

It is the one rule most ignored by newbies who then complain that LINUX is too difficult.

 

Cheers. JOHN