HD and Live-CD DSL hangs during boot

Forum: HD Install
Topic: HD and Live-CD DSL hangs during boot
started by: saivert

Posted by saivert on May 11 2005,08:19

The BIOS loads the Live-CD version of DSL (kernel 2.4.26, DSL 1.0) but it hangs right after the two penguins are displayed on the screen. The solid caret blinks three times before it hangs, leaving no error message (so I can now what the problem is). I manage to boot the Live-CD when using the "failsafe" boot option, and also when using "expert" when manually specifying ide-cd.o and ide-scsi.o (no other modules are neccessary).

The computer I'm using is a standard Dell OptiPlex GX270 (Intel Pentium 4 HT, 1024MB RAM, Intel Extreme Graphics).

I'm actually writing this post from within DSL and using Firefox, so I know it should work. There is just something that locks up the system during normal boot (when not using "failsafe" or "expert").

The reason why I post this in the HD-Install section is because I installed DSL (executed with "failsafe" from Live-CD) to the HD.

My partitions (single drive only):
Partition No., Type, Size, My Comment
#1, FAT16, 100 MB, Dell Utility Partiton (contains some diagnostic tools)
#2, Linux swap (type 82), 512MB, Used the setup from the manual
#3, Linux (type 83), 3000MB, Same as in manual except 3GB instead of suggested 2GB

When I boot into the Linux partition using Lilo (it installed withouth errors from mkliloboot) it doesn't display the Penguins like in Live-CD version but lists up a lot of status messages as it boots. It hangs right after it has finished probing the ATA drives (it finds the first drive a Western Digital one), and after two probelines with some other device (CDROM I guess).

Posted by cbagger01 on May 11 2005,11:35

Here are the individual cheatcodes for a "failsafe" bootup:

dsl vga=normal atapicd nosound noapic noacpi acpi=off noscsi noapm nousb nopcmcia nofirewire noagp nomce nodhcp

Try mixing and matching them until you find out which one helps you boot up.

Posted by saivert on May 12 2005,05:58

Yes, but how do I make the HD version boot like that. What you are writing can only be typed in at the Live-CD boot menu. The HD installation of DSL boots directly without any boot options menu. And LILO can't be used for such advanced stuff. Why didn't they choose GRUB for their boot selector menu? GRUB is much more powerful than LILO.

Posted by cbagger01 on May 12 2005,16:22

GRUB user interface does not work on some older computers, but my guess is that LILO came with knoppix already, so lets stick with it.

Anyways, you can get these boot codes by editing your lilo configuration.

sudo beaver /etc/lilo.conf

then add them to the append line and save

then run

sudo lilo -v

to activate your changes and reboot.

Posted by rabbitofdeath on June 29 2005,00:33

Thank you so much!

This helped me tremendously! I had a problem where the ACPI would seem to shutdown the computer and I was pulling my hair out. This should be a sticky thread.