Faulty Boot

Forum: USB booting
Topic: Faulty Boot
started by: Robert

Posted by Robert on Mar. 07 2005,23:20

I have my usb drive working it always booted sucsessfully until now

I installed some .dsl extentions and now it only boots abbout half of the time i try to i have to turno off my system and try again sometimes 3 times?!?
could this be because my pen drive is faulty maybe booting DLS ruined some sectors when it doesnt boot properly i get past the boot screen past the cute little picture of tux past DSL grapic past four lines of configuration and then spits out a lond paragraph of trying to find somthing and then it says that it cant find a file in the Knoptix folder

Its worked befor What is wrong now?

Thanks

Posted by michael on Mar. 08 2005,11:47

I've exactly the same behaviour with my dsl-installation (but without any installed dsl-extensions); sometime it's booting sometime it's not. When it's not booting, the kernel-image could not be found because the USB-stick could not be mounted properly. For me it looks like a kind of an initialisation problem of the USB-system. I'm using a USB-hub with an LED for each USB-port. When the LED is on, the port seems to be ready/initialised. At boottime the LED is on, after the bootprompt the bootloader is trying to switch to the kernels usb-system. This step obviously fails sometimes. At this step the LED is off for a short time. When the bootprocess fails, the LED is not going on again. After that, resetting my PC dosn't even work; I have to switch it of completly (on the main-switch on the backside of the box) to reset the usb-system.
I tried to increase the delay (in linuxrc) between loading the usb-modules and mounting the usb-stick, but without any success. Maybe it is a hardware problem (using a gigabyte mainboard). Curiously it's working properly with my standard linux-system using kernel 2.6.

Posted by Robert on Mar. 08 2005,13:28

I think i might have found a solution (to my problem anyway)
so far it has been working ok today i thing the problem might have been that i kept shuting down by disconnecting the power because i didnt think the shutdown command was working -- well gues what i just have to be paitient a wait a little while and now it is woking ok

also i wonder if my flash disk was overheating yester day i must have booted at least 10 times and the coolling cant be to good in a sealed plastic case:)

sorry about the spelling -- in a hurry

Posted by cbagger01 on Mar. 09 2005,03:19

Flash memory usually doesn't generate a lot of heat.

I usually disable "fast bootup" or "skip POST powerup selftest" in the computer BIOS.

If the computer will boot up more slowly it is more likely to find the USB drive that is attached.

Posted by Robert on Mar. 10 2005,00:40

what we are talking about is the boot starts but then it stops when it tries to find a file in the knoptix folder
but it only happens sometimes
ive found a solution to my problem - it doenst boot unless i shut DSL down properly beforhand