Meaning of boot codes?

Forum: Other Help Topics
Topic: Meaning of boot codes?
started by: gjhicks

Posted by gjhicks on Feb. 09 2006,00:37

Hi,

On the Knoppix site, under the boot cheat codes, it lists the following as possible codes to avoid specific hardware detection:

noapic noagp noapm nodma nomce nofirewire nopcmcia noscsi noswap nousb nosmp noaudio

While some are obvious, like noswap, nopcmcia, etc, what do nomce, noapic and noddc (used by DSL?) mean?

Thanks,

Geoff.

Posted by cbagger01 on Feb. 09 2006,04:58

APIC is the advanced programmable interrupt controller. On some computers (sometimes non-intel ones), the apic handling does not work correctly, so it can be disabled with "noapic"

< http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki....troller >

DDC is used by video drivers to determine your monitor's supported refresh rates and resolutions. It only works on newer monitors, and due to DSL's tinyX servers, it does not apply here. It does apply for knoppix, though.

< http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Display_Data_Channel >

MCE stands for Machine Check Exception, which is a method for an operating system like Linux to check and make sure that the CPU-related hardware is still working OK. If a machine check exception message appears, usually the operating system will stop in order to prevent corruption of any ongoing work, kinda like a "Blue Screen of Death" in the MSWindows world.

Anyways, some computer hardware does not seem to work properly with linux MCE handling, so if you are getting mce kernel panics even though your hardware is "good" you can then disable the checking with the "nomce" boot parameter.

Posted by gjhicks on Feb. 09 2006,05:54

Thanks for your reply. I had been busily using/not using those codes, when trying to get old machines to "talk DSL" (specially weird laptops).

Now they make some sense - pity the Knoppix people didn't put a bit more explanation on their boot codes page. Once again the DSL forum shows its superiority (sp?) over the "big" distro forums!

Bye for now,

Geoff.

Posted by gjhicks on Feb. 09 2006,05:58

ps: you mentioned the MSWindows "blue screen of death" - if you have an idle moment pop over to my < website >. Dont panic, just wait a few seconds. Just a bit of fun!