Freeze during boot

Forum: User Feedback
Topic: Freeze during boot
started by: Qwertie

Posted by Qwertie on Jan. 15 2006,17:27

I'm trying to boot from a CD (dsl-2.1b.iso) and it freezes at the very beginning, when "Checking for for USB..." is displayed. Hm.. help?

Posted by mcruser on Jan. 15 2006,20:25

Hi, Qwertie -

I'm pretty new to Linux myself, and I just downloaded the ISO today and had the same problem getting it to work on my old Gateway Solo 5100 laptop. I snooped a bit online and found that for some systems, the startup BIOS config utility has an option for whether the system is Plug-n-Play compatable. I changed my PNP setting from yes to no, saved it & restarted. Now I've got DSL running from the CD, and it looks pretty fast for this legacy system. However, I'm still trying to figure out how to get the mouse and PCMIA Wireless card to work correctly. At any rate, I hope this helps.

Happy Linuxing!

Marc

Posted by Qwertie on Jan. 15 2006,22:03

In contrast, I have a pretty new system (P4 3GHz, 512MB, 80gig, etc...) and in my BIOS, "Plug & Play OS" is already set to "No".

The reason I'm booting Knoppix is that Windows won't start due to an apparently corrupt registry (blue screen C0000218). Other than that problem, I have no reason to believe anything is wrong with my system.

I tried "failsafe" mode, but got the following error message:

Can't find KNOPPIX filesystem, sorry.
Dropping you to a (very limited) shell.
Press reset button to quit.

I don't think I can do anything from that shell... even the 'ls' command is "not found".

Posted by Snv on Jan. 16 2006,01:46

I have exactly the same problem on my Toshiba Satellite M40.

Immediately after checking USB and saying "Done" it freezes on the 2.1b live CD - I thought it was only me. Whew!!

Posted by Snv on Jan. 16 2006,04:13

Quote (Qwertie @ Jan. 15 2006,17:03)

Quote

I tried "failsafe" mode, but got the following error message:

Can't find KNOPPIX filesystem, sorry.
Dropping you to a (very limited) shell.
Press reset button to quit.

Tried that and got the same result .... seems like we are having the same issues. My Toshiba Satellite is running a Pentium M processor 1.86Ghz, and is pretty up to date.

What comes after USB on the load? If we knew that, perhaps we could figure out what was failing, and causing it to freeze?

Posted by Qwertie on Jan. 16 2006,15:07

OK, I just tried Knoppix, which has a similar startup sequence. Knoppix successfully gets past its "USB/Firewire" step but then freezes for awhile saying "Looking for CD in /dev/hda ".

Then it says it fails with the same error message as DSL gave, followed by an error message about IRQ 18: "nobody cared!". I guess Knoppix feels bad when that happens.

So then I downloaded a kubuntu live CD, which provided a very friendly interface. It seemed to do so much before failing that I thought it must be working, but eventually it said that it couldn't mount the CD. I was given a shell with a fairly good set of programs in a RAM drive. Is there any way I can gather information about the problem from here?

I've also tried physically rearranging the IDE devices (switching between primary and secondary, master and slave) and fiddling with BIOS settings, to no avail.

Can someone explain how it is that so much can be loaded from a CD drive that is supposedly undetectable?

Posted by Qwertie on Jan. 16 2006,15:14

snv, I couldn't guess what's wrong, but you might try a (k)ubuntu live CD, simply because it seems to give more decriptive error messages and provides a shell.

Posted by Snv on Jan. 16 2006,15:36

The Toshiba laptop has one of the CD/DVD multidrives. (No other CD/DVD drives).

Maybe it doesn't like that type of drive, for some reason?

Posted by Snv on Jan. 16 2006,17:31

Quote (Qwertie @ Jan. 16 2006,10:14)

snv, I couldn't guess what's wrong, but you might try a (k)ubuntu live CD, simply because it seems to give more decriptive error messages and provides a shell.

I'll give Knoppis a try tonight when I get home (if the baby gives me an hour or so break) and let you know what it says at my end. Perhaps we can diagnose between our two machines, and see what is similar?

Specs on the Toshiba M40 I'm running this on, are here:
< http://www.toshiba.ca/web....rt=2873 >

By chance is your CD Rom a "DVD Super-Multi Double Layer Drive"??

Posted by Qwertie on Jan. 16 2006,22:23

I don't know what Super Multi means. It's a dual layer 16x with no brand name on the front. Btw, Knoppix might not help you because it's so similar to DSL.

Posted by Snv on Jan. 16 2006,23:33

Quote (Qwertie @ Jan. 16 2006,17:23)

I don't know what Super Multi means. It's a dual layer 16x with no brand name on the front. Btw, Knoppix might not help you because it's so similar to DSL.

Super Multi I "believe" refers to the fact that it burns and reads both DVD and CD.

Does that fit your drive?

I was hoping someone else might have hit the same freezing problem, and have some answers. It was sooo nice running DSL in embedded mode, I really would like to get the LiveCD to work

Posted by Qwertie on Jan. 17 2006,04:15

Status update: While booting with the Ubuntu Live CD, I realized that for a split second before the graphical boot screen appears, there is a warning message that appears on the screen first. Luckily, the pause key worked and I caught the message:

IOLINUX 2.04 2003-06-16 isolinux: Loading spec packet failed, trying to wing it...
isolinux: Extremely broken BIOS detected, last ditch attempt with drive = EF
Copyright © 1994-2003 H. Peter Anvin

For what it's worth. Still nobody has any ideas? This message is strange because it's a pretty new computer and it used to work fine with Windows. I can't tell if something changed with the CD drive because I don't recall ever trying to boot from it before, except to install Windows.

Posted by cbagger01 on Jan. 17 2006,06:11

You may already have thought of this one, but maybe if you download the dsl-syslinux.iso and burn it to CD it will work for you.

There is only one way to know for sure... try it

Posted by Snv on Jan. 17 2006,17:41

Quote (cbagger01 @ Jan. 17 2006,01:11)

You may already have thought of this one, but maybe if you download the dsl-syslinux.iso and burn it to CD it will work for you.

There is only one way to know for sure... try it

Thats what I did. Downloaded dsl-2.1b.iso and burned it to disk, then tried to load it. When I ran it, it froze just after the USB check and it said "Done".

I believe Qwertie did that too - both of us have the freezing issue.

Posted by cbagger01 on Jan. 17 2006,18:25

dsl-2.1b-syslinux.iso

is different from

dsl-2.1b.iso

Posted by Snv on Jan. 17 2006,18:52

Quote (cbagger01 @ Jan. 17 2006,13:25)

dsl-2.1b-syslinux.iso

is different from

dsl-2.1b.iso

Ahh - thank you!

I'll try that tonight and see if it works!

Posted by Qwertie on Jan. 18 2006,07:07

What is different about the syslinux version?

By the way, I've come to the conclusion (=guess) that it's a faulty motherboard, so I plan to buy a new one tomorrow.

Posted by Delboy on Jan. 18 2006,10:44

Me too - v2.1.iso booting on Toshiba Portege 3440CT with an (original) external CDRom drive. It starts the USB probe then immediately stops with red text then "Can't find image... etc. dropping you to a very limited shell" etc.
I tried Cbagger's tip last night of copying the /knoppix/knoppix folder and file to my C:\ dos partition as well but it didn't work either. Which boot parameter might sort this out?
(CDRom drive boots first time with variety of linux live .Isos most go a bit further than DSL before stopping:
- Slax Popcorn edition runs a page or so before stopping with a message questioning if my 'CD-rom is an unsupported SCSI' or something
- Morphix: 'can't find image'
- Puppy: This goes quite a way and stops after a memory probe - I havent got enough ram- but at least it continues to read the cdrom )

Posted by noiz on Jan. 18 2006,12:35

Hey all,

Im having exactly the same problem with dsl-2.1b.iso. My computer is pretty new (P4 3.2ghz, 2gb ram). For me, DSL freezes just after it does the autodetect thing (percentage loader green bar). Upon freezing, the floppy drive light is illuminated. I attempted to insert a floppy before it reached that point during boot, but i only ended up nuking a floppy.

I have the latest Knoppix (4.0.2) running fine on this computer as well. Im thinking it could be due to the kernel age (2.4) vs 2.6 for the latest Knoppix.

noiz

Posted by noiz on Jan. 18 2006,13:02

Hey again,

I realised it is not autodetect but autoconfigure.

Also, ive tryed the DSL cd in both my generic 52x ide cdrom and my pioneer 16x dvd-rw drive running on usb.

noiz

Posted by cmanb on Jan. 18 2006,17:42

Quote (Qwertie @ Jan. 16 2006,10:07)

Can someone explain how it is that so much can be loaded from a CD drive that is supposedly undetectable?

You know, I have a similar problem with an old laptop that I dust off every now and then to mess with. I can't get it to boot at all no matter what I try.

Difference is that it doesn't have a working cdrom. I boot it with a tomsrtbt floppy, and it loads the whole thing but then seems to crap out when trying to mount the floppy drive.

Posted by cbagger01 on Jan. 18 2006,17:58

SYSLINUX is a different way to load up linux from a bootable CDROM. It is also used for linux boot floppy disks.

Some computers, usually older ones, will not boot with ISOLINUX but can use SYSLINUX.

Posted by Qwertie on Jan. 21 2006,05:43

Status update... I bought an external DVD drive and successfully booted a Kubuntu live CD from it; it detected my hardware and now I'm writing this message from the live CD! And I notice that the names of Linux distros are red... apparently Konquerer has a spell-checker built in?!?!

Knoppix wouldn't start (couldn't mount CD bla bla), and I haven't tried DSL yet (I was just so happy to see something work that I had to write this message :P)

Unfortunately, I cannot mount my hard drive; there are no /dev/hda* files. I would have bought a new motherboard already, but they were out of stock. The oddest thing is that while two Linux distros won't recognize my hard drives, a simple Win98 DOS disk can see the FAT32 partitions! Unfortunately, it does me no good because my main partition is NTFS.

Perhaps there's a compatibility setting I could use to make it see the hard drive?

Posted by Snv on Jan. 21 2006,13:57

Okay, I finallly go the time and tried the syslinux.iso.

Again, it stops dead immediately after it says the USB is being managed by "hotplug". Thats it.

The Toshiba M45 I'm running this on is fairly new (less than a year old) and the only thing that I can think of is the super multi dvd drive?

Please - anyone - help???

Posted by Snv on Jan. 21 2006,18:54

Ok - I've now tried disabling all the hardware. (ie. nousb etc) Nothing helped.

I tried failsafe mode and it said that it couldn't find the Knoppix filesystem, so it was dropping me down to a limited shell.

Suggestions? Anyone?

Posted by Qwertie on Jan. 21 2006,19:20

snv, is your drive internal? By the way, regarding your guess about Super Multi drives, I don't know of any DVD burner that can't burn and read CDs also.

I tried DSL (dsl-2.1b.iso) on my new external USB DVD rewriter but it froze at the "looking for USB" step, IIRC. Again, Kubuntu works, so maybe it's just a problem with Knoppix-based distros.

Posted by Snv on Jan. 21 2006,19:47

Yes, drive is internal - its a Toshiba laptop.

Drive was just a weak guess, because you mentioned drive. I have no idea what it is. Like you, however, I'm always freezing after USB.

I can always try Ubuntu, but had wanted to specifically get DSL running

Posted by psycho dad on Jan. 28 2006,14:44

my dsl2.1b freezes after autoconfigure:( i have AMD 2600+ 512MBRAM but on my mothers ibm laptop it boots normaly (2.0celeron 256MBRAM) i have no idea what is wrong on my pc

anyone solved this problem?? what about dsl developers??

ps. i tried puppy linux on my computer and it boots normally and works fine

Posted by nonamenopicture on Jan. 31 2006,23:27

My first try of DSL, it freezes:
1- downloaded current iso (v2, 11-Jan-2006 01:45 50M )
2- burned it using roxio
3- started toshiba techra 8000, 196 MB ram with that CD inside
4- it did start from CD, showed grey DSL screen, and boot prompt
5- timed out on boot prompt, showed the penguin image, "no warranty" text
6- recognized ram, made ramdisk, and entered init
---
INIT:version 2.78-knoppix booting
Running Linux kernel 2.4.31.
Processor 0 is Pentium II (Deschutes) 299MHz, 512 KB Cache
---
7- cursor stopped blinking
8- froze there, screen still legible,

- freezes also if boot command is "dsl lang=no vga=790"
- freezes also if boot command is "fb1024x768"
- freezes also if boot command is "failsafe"
- freezes also if boot command is "dsl lang=no toram vga=normal"

Installation seemed very simple, but failed for me...

Posted by cbagger01 on Feb. 01 2006,18:28

How about try:

failsafe acpi=off

Posted by nonamenopicture on Feb. 01 2006,20:16

failsafe acpi=off " does not freeze but takes me to a "very limited shell".

Posted by cbagger01 on Feb. 03 2006,03:49

How about this:

Copy the dsl cd over to your C:\ drive, IE:

C:\KNOPPIX\KNOPPIX

Note the uppercase letters.

Then boot with

failsafe acpi=off

and see if it boots.

Posted by nonamenopicture on Feb. 03 2006,22:12

Thanks for the answer.

I repeated the same procedure after copying the CD contents (Only the folder KONPPIX, not boot, not index.html) into the C: drive. The stable version threw me into the limited shell (better than last attempt). The latest version did boot up (also better than the last time). Now I ended up in a regular shell with commands such as ls, pwd, ps working. The error message that was printed just before the boot sequence aborted is as follows:

modprobe: modprobe: Can't locate module fb0
XIO: fatal IO error 104 (Connection reset by peer) on Xserver ":0.0" after 0 requests (0 known processed) with 0 events remaining.

Processes running are : [keventd][ksoftirqd_CPU0][kswapd][bdflush][kupdated][khubd][-su][/bin/bash -login]

Posted by cbagger01 on Feb. 04 2006,05:56

Hmm...

How about:

dsl acpi=off xsetup

or

failsafe acpi=off xsetup

and then choose the xvesa server when prompted.

Posted by nonamenopicture on Feb. 04 2006,12:11

Thanks again for persisting with me.

failsafe acpi=off xsetup

gave the same result (bash prompt after several selections)

dsl acpi=off xsetup

went much further than last time but stoppeed after two lines "xauth creating new authority file /home/dsl/.Xauthority"