Cannot boot when harddisk with NTFS is plugged

[lissyx]

Hi all !

i've just installed the fresh-new Knoppix 3.8.1. It boots correctly, but not on a laptop. A Toshiba Satellite Pro. When removing harddisk, it boots.

With harddisk plugged, it hangs on "Scanning for Harddisk partitions and creating /etc/fstab ..." and never came back ...
Without, it simply works perfect. On all the other machine i tried, harddisk were plugged. The only difference is that only the Toshiba has NTFS partitions ...

As there's some new features for NTFS in this release, think it's due to this.

Can anybody help me booting without unplugging the harddisk?

Thanks.

[Harry Kuhman]

On all the other machine i tried, harddisk were plugged. The only difference is that only the Toshiba has NTFS partitions ....
I don't quite know what "harddisk were plugged" means, but I strongly suspect there are more differences in those systems than the Toshiba having NTFS partitions (starting with the others are apparently not even Toshibas). I don't think it has anythig to do with NTFS partitions. You might want to read this recent thread: Boots on 1 PC but not on the other ??? (http://www.knoppix.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=18219)

[lissyx]

On all the other machine i tried, harddisk were plugged. The only difference is that only the Toshiba has NTFS partitions ....
I don't quite know what "harddisk were plugged" means, but I strongly suspect there are more differences in those systems than the Toshiba having NTFS partitions (starting with the others are apparently not even Toshibas). I don't think it has anythig to do with NTFS partitions. You might want to read this recent thread: Boots on 1 PC but not on the other ??? (http://www.knoppix.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=18219)

it simply means that harddisks were present during boot.
With Knoppix 3.7, this laptop was booting correctly. All i know i that on all the other machines, partitions are either ext3 or fat32, but as far as i remember none is NTFS. (and i can't check for now).

Thanks for the link, but it didn't help me ...
checksum is good, and the Knoppix CD is directly on network using NFS, and a mount -o loop :)

And you're right, the other are not even Toshibas ... The Toshiba is a laptop, not the others ...

And here is my commandline in PXEGrub :
(nd)/boot/knoppix-vmlinuz nfsdir=192.168.0.3:/partage/knoppix-cd/ nodhcp lang=fr desktop=kde vga=792 ramdisk_size=100000 BOOT_IMAGE=knoppix

Update (12 april, 14:33 Paris, France) :
I've just checked, on another machine with a 40Go harddisk, with ext3/fat32 partitions, there is no problem !


Err ... The ASUS has also FAT32 ... and boots correctly ..

[lissyx]

Here is the output of the partitions list from fdisk /dev/hda, using 'RIP'.


Command (m for help): p

Disk /dev/hda: 20.0GB, 20003880960 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 2432 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065*512 = 8225280 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hda1 * 1 510 4096543+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/hda2 511 2432 15438465 7 HPFS/NTFS

[lissyx]

Some news again :

i'm able to boot on the Toshiba, passing 'nofstab' on the kernel command line. BUT ! i tried to do a 'sudo fdisk /dev/hda' once the machine was up, and never get the prompt back. a sudo kill -9 or kill -15 didn't stop the fdisk processus ...

i've done a strace on this fdisk /dev/hda, automount wasn't launched. (it's the same with)


root@1[autofs]# strace fdisk /dev/hda
execve("/sbin/fdisk", ["fdisk", "/dev/hda"], [/* 34 vars */]) = 0
uname({sys="Linux", node="Knoppix", ...}) = 0
brk(0) = 0x805e000
old_mmap(NULL, 4096, PROT_READ|PROT_WRITE, MAP_PRIVATE|MAP_ANONYMOUS, -1, 0) = 0xb7fe9000
access("/etc/ld.so.nohwcap", F_OK) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)
open("/etc/ld.so.preload", O_RDONLY) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)
open("/etc/ld.so.cache", O_RDONLY) = 3
fstat64(3, {st_mode=S_IFREG|0644, st_size=58018, ...}) = 0
old_mmap(NULL, 58018, PROT_READ, MAP_PRIVATE, 3, 0) = 0xb7fda000
close(3) = 0
access("/etc/ld.so.nohwcap", F_OK) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)
open("/lib/tls/libc.so.6", O_RDONLY) = 3
read(3, "\177ELF\1\1\1\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\3\0\3\0\1\0\0\0\36 0Y\1"..., 512) = 512
fstat64(3, {st_mode=S_IFREG|0644, st_size=1253924, ...}) = 0
old_mmap(NULL, 1260140, PROT_READ|PROT_EXEC, MAP_PRIVATE, 3, 0) = 0xb7ea6000
old_mmap(0xb7fcf000, 32768, PROT_READ|PROT_WRITE, MAP_PRIVATE|MAP_FIXED, 3, 0x129000) = 0xb7fcf000
old_mmap(0xb7fd7000, 10860, PROT_READ|PROT_WRITE, MAP_PRIVATE|MAP_FIXED|MAP_ANONYMOUS, -1, 0) = 0xb7fd7000
close(3) = 0
old_mmap(NULL, 4096, PROT_READ|PROT_WRITE, MAP_PRIVATE|MAP_ANONYMOUS, -1, 0) = 0xb7ea5000
set_thread_area({entry_number:-1 -> 6, base_addr:0xb7ea5460, limit:1048575, seg_32bit:1, contents:0, read_exec_only:0, limit_in_pages:1, seg_not_present:0, useable:1}) = 0
munmap(0xb7fda000, 58018) = 0
open("/usr/lib/locale/locale-archive", O_RDONLY|O_LARGEFILE) = 3
fstat64(3, {st_mode=S_IFREG|0644, st_size=14636176, ...}) = 0
mmap2(NULL, 2097152, PROT_READ, MAP_PRIVATE, 3, 0) = 0xb7ca5000
mmap2(NULL, 212992, PROT_READ, MAP_PRIVATE, 3, 0x487) = 0xb7c71000
brk(0) = 0x805e000
brk(0x807f000) = 0x807f000
brk(0) = 0x807f000
mmap2(NULL, 4096, PROT_READ, MAP_PRIVATE, 3, 0x4bf) = 0xb7c70000
close(3) = 0
open("/dev/hda", O_RDWR|O_LARGEFILE) = 3
read(3, <unfinished ...>
root@1[autofs]#

[whoeverheis]

I can't help you with your problem because I don't even understand it. Just be aware that thousands of computers have winxp ntfs and knoppix happily co-existing on their hard drives. I have 3.8 on a gateway laptop, an averatec laptop, and my vpr matrix desktop along with winxp. I wish I could be of some help but I would have to go looking for trouble!

[lissyx]

I can't help you with your problem because I don't even understand it. Just be aware that thousands of computers have winxp ntfs and knoppix happily co-existing on their hard drives. I have 3.8 on a gateway laptop, an averatec laptop, and my vpr matrix desktop along with winxp. I wish I could be of some help but I would have to go looking for trouble!

i know, and as i said in the beginning, Knoppix 3.7 works correctly with the hard drive ... And i haven't any other NTFS drive at home, so i can't test with another (and no free drive too ...).
You said you have Knoppix 3.8 working perfectly, could you try with 3.8.1 ?

Thanks :)

PS: excuse me for my bad english, i'm not english at all !

[whoeverheis]

Hang in there lissyx. I'm downloading 3.8.1 on another computer at this very moment. I'm spoiled with 3 computers on cable :oops: Should be only about 2 hours to download, burn and boot. I'll let you know of any problems. Most Americans should be as articulate as you 8)

[whoeverheis]

Well, it took 2 downloads. The first one had md5 problems. This is coming to you from one of my hd installs. 3.8.1 seems to be alive and well. I don't have time right now to look at the differences but I've noticed a few. I now have winxp, knoppix 3.7, 3.8, 3.8.1 and puppy all on one hd and they're all getting along just fine. :mrgreen: Good luck and I sure hope you find your problem.

[Harry Kuhman]

Well, it took 2 downloads. The first one had md5 problems..
That's been my experience with the mirrors too, about 1/2 the downloads are bad. I bet if you checked the size the bad ISO would have been slightly larger, and if you searched out the differences that you would find Linux New Line character bytes replaced with MS LF/CR pairs. Bittorrent has it's own checking that prevents this, but when using a mirror this happens.

[tinybox]

I have exactly that very same problem that lissyx describes at the top of this thread. Everything works w/ Knoppix-3.7 but 3.8.1 hangs right after the "creating /etc/fstab". I think the problem is not related to NTFS although there is an NTFS partition on the disk in question too. The reason for the hang in my case was because knoppix wanted to enable a swap partition that it found on the disk in question.

What I did as a recovery was to boot knoppix-3.7 and I wiped out the swap partition as well as the ext3fs that was used for installing knoppix-3.7. After that I was able to cleanly boot knoppix-3.8.1 from the CD.

Next step I tried was to install knoppix-3.8.1 on that disk. I ran into numerous problems. Which all ended with processes hanging on the disk access, e.g. "fdisk -l /dev/hdb" never came back, :mkfs.ext3 /dev/hdb3" never came back....

It is exactly the same pattern that lissyx described. "dmesg" showed tons of errors like:

..... status=0x51 {DriveReady SeekComplete Error}
..... error=0x10 { SectorIDNotFound } .......

I am confident that the disk is ok as WindowsXP doesn't report any errors, of course it doesn't access exactly the areas where knoppix wanted to get its hands on. I have tried to boot knoppix with "nodma' but this didn't make a difference.

My next step is now to re-install knoppix-3.7 so see whether that still works as it did before and if it does, then I will give it another try with knoppix-3.8.1. I will get back to this thread here and post the results.

PS: I am very confident that this is not a hardware problem. It suspect it is something in knoppix' linux-2.6.11 configuration. Perhaps the "IDE multi mode" config variable was not set? (speculating!)

[tinybox]

as I already stated I was indeed able to install knoppix-3.6 (didn't have my 3.7 handy) on that disk. However, as it turned out it seems to be a hardware problem with the disk. Will replace the disk and try again. If the problem persists I will report here. If everything runs smoot, which is what I expect, I will not post any followup.

[lissyx]

I've just seen that Knoppix 3.9 is available. I'll try with this release and give you feedback !

[lissyx]

So, i'm at home, and just tried the Knoppix 3.9. Problem is still here, and symptom are equals.

[ChrisDennis]

I know this thread is old, but I've just come across the same problem.

Running Knoppix CD 4.0.2 on a Toshiba Satellite Pro 6000, it hangs with the message about 'creating fstab'. In failsafe mode, it hangs trying to run fdisk.

If I use Knoppix 3.6, it creates an fstab that includes:

/dev/hda /mnt/hda auto noauto,users,exec 0 0

Note that's /dev/hda, NOT /dev/hda1. If I try

mount /dev/hda

I get

FAT: bogus logical sector size

(it's an NTFS disk). Now fdisk gives

/dev/hda1 * 1 4864 39870048+ 7 HPFS/NTFS

which looks reasonable. I tried

mount /dev/hda1 /mnt/hda

and got

mount: error while guessing filesystem type
HDA1: bad access: block=0, count=1
etc.

smartctl thinks the disk is OK.

The only reason I'm running Knoppix on this PC is to check the hard drive, because XP seems slow, but I mention it here because it seems to be an ongoing issue with Knoppix

regards

Chris