Can't get it to boot

Forum: HD Install
Topic: Can't get it to boot
started by: tomwgf

Posted by tomwgf on April 25 2005,13:55

hi
i did a cd install on an old computer and it worked brilliantly - love it.
But i am now doing a floppy and network hardrive install and when it comes to starting from the Dsl boot disk it fails and i get:
INIT: No inittab file found
INIT: Entering runlevel 2
INIT: no more processes left in this level.
_

The install stuff is on a harddrive so it should run from it, i don't particularly want to start dsl from there - i would prefer to just install it properly to a harddrive if that were possible.

i am a noobie
thanks

Posted by tomwgf on April 26 2005,14:29

It is now running from harddrive disk image.
i re-partitioned the hardrive so that the image ended up on hda1 which i read somewhere was important. But still had the same inittab problem.
then tried, with frugal boot disk, booting with dsl mem=16M as this is a 486 laptop and it seems to have worked!
i have a blank desktop with an X that moves slowly.
now i just have to work out how to start a terminal and try and get a HD install.

Posted by tomwgf on April 26 2005,15:05

Stared at the screen for a bit and moved the mouse about a bit but eventually had to turn off the power.

restarted using dsl 2 mem=16M which got me to a command prompt but with an unhappy harddrive ( because i had just turned off the power)

Ran e2fsck -n /dev/hda1 to see if it needed fixing, it didn't but had to fix the other partitions with -p.

About to try hd install

Posted by cbagger01 on April 26 2005,16:40

FYI, if you want a leaner X-Windows system, try booting with:

dsl mem=16M noicons nousb noagp

And see if you can run some applications from the "Right-Click" main menu like dillo.

Also, setting up a DOS swapfile or a Linux swap partition should help things out quite a bit, even in text mode.

Posted by tomwgf on April 27 2005,14:03

thanks you.
wiped everything and started again, booting with
dsl mem=16M noicons nousb noagp
and got a desktop. It was very slow but i was able to switch desktop styles to minimal which was much faster - the mouse almost kept up. tired to start a few programs beginning with mozilla which was probably a bit rash, nothing really worked after that not even getting to a terminal so i had to pull the plug in the end.

Restarted anddid a harddrive install which failed to boot.

wiped everything and started again, booting with
dsl 2 mem=16M noicons nousb noagp noscsi
(but can i do nocd too or would it be nocdrom?)
to try the harddrive install from comand line.

Posted by tomwgf on April 27 2005,14:32

Done 2 Harddrive installs both failed at the same point:
'Unable to handle kernel paging request at virtual address 196c4cb4 .... then a few more lines of stuff ending with... Kernel panic: Aiee, killing interrupt handler!
In interrupt handler - not syncing'

It did seem to have quite a lot of things ok while booting up to this point.

Any ideas?

Posted by cbagger01 on April 27 2005,16:49

Not a clue.

But you could try even more restrictive boot with:

failsafe mem=16M noicons

Also, it is possible to set up a swap partition or a DOS swap file before doing an hd install. I highly recommend that you do this before you even begin the hd install.