What do you do when failsafe or testcd won't even boot?

[Drax946]

PC: HP Pavilion a705w Celeron 2.9GHz 786MB MS-6577 mATX rev 4.0 (aka Giovani2) i845GV chipset
added nVidia PCI video (set in BIOS as primary) eVGA 4000 MX 128MB

CD: Knoppix 3.8.2-EN (md5 verified CD ok on another PC and other pc was able to boot CD)

BIOS is set up allow CD bootup before HD. PnPOS=no. HP had BIOS update for this model which I thought may help, but it only made things worse it seems.

I receive the Autoconfig bar going across, gets to 100%, cursor jumps to next line (left side as normal), cursor jumps to middle of line, no activity from PC cursor still blinking. This using failsafe. with other cheatcodes the cursor stops blinking. Without the noapm I have to unplug the PC to turn it off for another go at a test.

I've tried:

1) knoppix noapic noagp noscsi nopcmcia acpi=off nousb pci=bios

2) knoppix noaudio nodma mem=256M pci=bios pnpbios=off acpi=off nousb2 noscsi nousb nofirewire nopcmcia noapic noapm noagp xmodule=nv

3) knoppix noaudio nodma mem=256M pci=bios pnpbios=off acpi=off nousb2 noscsi nousb nofirewire nopcmcia noapic noapm noagp xmodule=vesa

4) knoppix testcd (locked up on a blank screen just after it loaded linux.gz vmlinux files and cleared the screen)

5) failsafe

I've never been able to get knoppix or any other linux distro to boot in this PC. Any ideas would be greatly appreciated with the exception of "get rid of that piece of crap and get a real computer" which unfortunately is not an option.

[fingers99]

Suggestions only:

try a google for

your pc linux

(to see if there's a general solution)

set the bios to non plug'n play OS

[Drax946]

PnPOS=no as I posted in previous message. I've been googling on this for quite a while now, since 3.7 came out or a bit before. I've found that there was an issue with the i845 chipset which a patch was developed for, but my understanding was the 2.6 kernel did not require the patch to operate properly. It could be there is additional flakiness in the i845GV which has not been handled yet?

No luck on the search, I only get sites that seem to want to sell me another a705w. However the chipset search seems more fruitful, just many many many links to sift through. Several sites claim SuSe and Mandrake will run fine on this chipset.

[rwcitek]

PC: HP Pavilion a705w Celeron 2.9GHz 786MB MS-6577 mATX rev 4.0 (aka Giovani2) i845GV chipset
added nVidia PCI video (set in BIOS as primary) eVGA 4000 MX 128MB

I've tried:

1) knoppix noapic noagp noscsi nopcmcia acpi=off nousb pci=bios

2) knoppix noaudio nodma mem=256M pci=bios pnpbios=off acpi=off nousb2 noscsi nousb nofirewire nopcmcia noapic noapm noagp xmodule=nv

3) knoppix noaudio nodma mem=256M pci=bios pnpbios=off acpi=off nousb2 noscsi nousb nofirewire nopcmcia noapic noapm noagp xmodule=vesa

Why are you telling the kernel there are 256M when there are 786M?

A couple of more options to try:

1) boot: knoppix -b

2) boot: knoppix init=/bin/bash

Hopefully, the first one will work. If not, try the second.

Regards,
- Robert
http://www.cwelug.org/

[Drax946]

Why are you telling the kernel there are 256M when there are 786M?

A couple of more options to try:

1) boot: knoppix -b

2) boot: knoppix init=/bin/bash

Hopefully, the first one will work. If not, try the second.

Regards,
- Robert
http://www.cwelug.org/

The example was 128M and I wasn't sure how much would be taked up by the RAMDisk, so 256M seemed a better choice than the example 128M.

Tried both the "-b" and the "init=/bin/bash" with a resulting empty black screen and a system freeze/hang at that point for each tried individually.

I tried a suggestion from another thread, you may have posted it that included "nomce nosmp" which I added to the list of cheatcodes I first posted. These didn't work either.

I did notice that my floppy drive light comes on during the end of the AutoConfig and doesn't go out until I turn the PC off (Ctrl-Alt-Del doesn't work in any of the cases).

I'm wondering if there is a **full** list of cheatcodes somewhere which holds the answer?

[Harry Kuhman]

There are generally several things to do when a CD will not boot. You've eliminated some issues, but I'll cover them here anyway for the next guy.
1) Confirm that md5 sum. You tell us you did this, but it's likely the most common booting problem for people who download from mirrors rather than from Bittorrent.

2) Use Cheat Codes. Again, you indicate that you can't even get far enough to use failsafe (the ultimate cheat code for finding the source of a problem).

3) Burn the CD at a slow speed. People just seem to refuse to accept that this is an issue, but we see cases over and over again where it is the issue. Just because a CD burnt at high speed works on one system does not mean it will work on another. Here are just two of many threads on this issue: http://www.knoppix.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=17788 and http://www.knoppix.net/forum/viewtopic.php?p=78925#78925 .

4) Use a boot manager like SBM (http://btmgr.webframe.org/) or XOSL (http://www.ranish.com/part/xosl.htm) that will boot a CD, even if your BIOS has issues with all or some bootable CDs. SBM runs from hard disk MBR or floppy. XOSL must be installed on the hard disk (best to give it it's own small partition).

[rwcitek]

Tried both the "-b" and the "init=/bin/bash" with a resulting empty black screen and a system freeze/hang at that point for each tried individually.
It is possible that your machine has a tough time with your burned CD. But for fun, try one more option: boot: failsafe -b 1 You should get a prompt that ends with " ... normal startup):" Just press Enter and you should get a bash shell prompt that says: root@console[~]# This is the "emergency mode" prompt. Do you get that prompt? To restart, press the reset switch or power switch on your machine.


I'm wondering if there is a **full** list of cheatcodes somewhere which holds the answer?
There are several places to find cheatcodes, including the CD iteself, but I don't know if any of them are "full". The one I like is on the wiki page: http://www.knoppix.net/wiki/Cheat_Codes

Regards,
- Robert
http://www.cwelug.org/

[Drax946]

There are generally several things to do when a CD will not boot. You've eliminated some issues, but I'll cover them here anyway for the next guy.
1) Confirm that md5 sum. You tell us you did this, but it's likely the most common booting problem for people who download from mirrors rather than from Bittorrent.

2) Use Cheat Codes. Again, you indicate that you can't even get far enough to use failsafe (the ultimate cheat code for finding the source of a problem).

3) Burn the CD at a slow speed. People just seem to refuse to accept that this is an issue, but we see cases over and over again where it is the issue. Just because a CD burnt at high speed works on one system does not mean it will work on another. Here are just two of many threads on this issue: http://www.knoppix.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=17788 and http://www.knoppix.net/forum/viewtopic.php?p=78925#78925 .

4) Use a boot manager like SBM (http://btmgr.webframe.org/) or XOSL (http://www.ranish.com/part/xosl.htm) that will boot a CD, even if your BIOS has issues with all or some bootable CDs. SBM runs from hard disk MBR or floppy. XOSL must be installed on the hard disk (best to give it it's own small partition).

Thanks for being helpful.

In my particular care:

I downloaded using Bittorrent and also verified md5 using winmd5sum as well as using "knoppix testcd" on a PC which could boot the CD, and everything indicated the ISO and CD are fine.

CD is a 700MB 4x CD-RW so it was burned at 4x. The other 2 PCs I tested the CD on booted up just fine with no cheatcodes needed. PC I'm trying to boot with it is the same I burned the CD.

The BIOS finds the CD to be bootable and boots the CD, so I don't believe I would need a boot manager to boot it since the BIOS is already getting the CD started and passes off control.

The failure is in the Knoppix boot process somewhere. When Knoppix attempts to AutoConfig the devices. I find it interedting that the floppy light stays on from the latter portion of the autoconfig to lockup.

Thanks again.

[Harry Kuhman]

...
Thanks for being helpful.
....The BIOS finds the CD to be bootable and boots the CD, so I don't believe I would need a boot manager to boot it since the BIOS is already getting the CD started and passes off control. ...
Thanks again.
I knew the first 2 were not your issues, just wanted to cover the bases so the info would be in this post for the few readers who actually search rather than post the same questions over and over again. I had really expected the 3rd point was going to help you, but you're right, if you use a normal 700 meg CDRW then that imposes the speed limit on you already. It's very strange that you can't do a failsafe boot (not that it always gets everything right, but it usually helps you locate the problem area),

One more thought I can offer, for what little it's worth. Lots of people seem to be having more problems with 3.8.x than with previous versions. In my own case the computer that I normally run Knoppix on likes 3.8 more than 3.7 and I no longer need any cheat codes. But two other of my systems are not as happy with it and I've stayed with 3.7 on them. And I've decided to stop giving away any free Knoppix CD's until I see some sign that this is improving (not that I had given away a lot, but I had given away a small number of them). I just don't want to be associated with bad Knoppix experiences for new users. So my thought is that you might want to try getting a copy of 3.7 and seeing if it works any better for you. Yea, it's not the latest and greatest, but actually working has it's good points. If 3.7 does work for you that might help give you more insight on your 3.8 problems. At the very least you would have something that you could run while waiting for an improved new release. And if 3.7 doesn't work for you either, then you'll know not to take my advice in the future. Ad you'll know it's not a 3.8 issue.

[rwcitek]

If 3.7 does work for you that might help give you more insight on your 3.8 problems. At the very least you would have something that you could run while waiting for an improved new release. And if 3.7 doesn't work for you either, then you'll know not to take my advice in the future. Ad you'll know it's not a 3.8 issue.
Good idea. Yes, definitely try 3.7. One big difference between 3.7 and 3.8 was that 3.7 used the 2.4 kernel while 3.8 used the 2.6 kernel. Many drivers changed because of the kernel change.

Regards,
- Robert
http://www.cwelug.org/

[Harry Kuhman]

... One big difference between 3.7 and 3.8 was that 3.7 used the 2.4 kernel while 3.8 used the 2.6 kernel. ....
Well, actually 3.7 defaults to the 2.4 kernel, but if that works then it would be worth trying the knoppix26 cheat code to see if that boots or not. 3.7 does have a 2.6 kernel, just not the default kernel. Another key difference is that 3.7 has DMA on by default, so many people needed to use the nodma cheat code with 3.7 (knoppix nodma at the prompt). And in my own case I needed 2 cheat codes on my HP notebook with 3.7 but none at all with 3.8. I needed to boot with knoppix noscsi acpi=off cheat codes. So 3.7 may have it's own issues, but I'm just out of things to suggest for 3.8.x.

[Drax946]

Tried both the "-b" and the "init=/bin/bash" with a resulting empty black screen and a system freeze/hang at that point for each tried individually.
It is possible that your machine has a tough time with your burned CD. But for fun, try one more option: boot: failsafe -b 1 You should get a prompt that ends with " ... normal startup):" Just press Enter and you should get a bash shell prompt that says: root@console[~]# This is the "emergency mode" prompt. Do you get that prompt? To restart, press the reset switch or power switch on your machine.


I'm wondering if there is a **full** list of cheatcodes somewhere which holds the answer?
There are several places to find cheatcodes, including the CD iteself, but I don't know if any of them are "full". The one I like is on the wiki page: http://www.knoppix.net/wiki/Cheat_Codes

Regards,
- Robert
http://www.cwelug.org/

I was able to get to the prompt as you said using both "failsafe -b 1" and "failsafe -b" using the steps you provided.

It seems that the cheatcodes on the wiki and the CD combined may makeup the full list possibly? I don't recall seeing noddc on the wiki or the CD, but it is in the boot option "F3".

[Drax946]

One more thought I can offer, for what little it's worth. Lots of people seem to be having more problems with 3.8.x than with previous versions. In my own case the computer that I normally run Knoppix on likes 3.8 more than 3.7 and I no longer need any cheat codes. But two other of my systems are not as happy with it and I've stayed with 3.7 on them. And I've decided to stop giving away any free Knoppix CD's until I see some sign that this is improving (not that I had given away a lot, but I had given away a small number of them). I just don't want to be associated with bad Knoppix experiences for new users. So my thought is that you might want to try getting a copy of 3.7 and seeing if it works any better for you. Yea, it's not the latest and greatest, but actually working has it's good points. If 3.7 does work for you that might help give you more insight on your 3.8 problems. At the very least you would have something that you could run while waiting for an improved new release. And if 3.7 doesn't work for you either, then you'll know not to take my advice in the future. Ad you'll know it's not a 3.8 issue.

Interesting!

I was able to bootup Knoppix 3.7-2004-12-08-EN with failsafe but still couldn't use "knoppix testcd" (result: black screen). On another system the Knoppix 3.7 CDR tested good using "knoppix testcd".

I also had 3.6 and was able to boot that with failsafe, but still couldn't do a "knoppix testcd" (same result as 3.7).

Knoppix-STD 0.1 boots up fine with no cheatcodes! It is based on Knoppix 3.2. It would even let me do a "knoppix testcd", but the md5 file wasn't on the CD. But I did get text and an attempt with a failure because it couldn't find the file with a nice reboot (cd ejection and everything!)

So whatever changed with the between 3.7 and 3.8 broke the failsafe booting is my guess. The test cd from 3.2 working was a shock, so I wonder when a change broke that? Definitely 3.6 or before.

[rwcitek]

I was able to get to the prompt as you said using both "failsafe -b 1" and "failsafe -b" using the steps you provided.

It seems that the cheatcodes on the wiki and the CD combined may makeup the full list possibly? I don't recall seeing noddc on the wiki or the CD, but it is in the boot option "F3".

That's great news that failsafe -b worked. That means that Knoppix can enter "emergency mode" and that the 2.6 kernel does indeed work on your machine. It also means that one or more of the failsafe cheatcodes are needed to boot the machine. I'll try to find them and post them.

The next step is to try failsafe 1, which will put Knoppix in Runlevel 1. You'll know your in runlevel 1 when you get a prompt root@tty1[/]#. From what you've described before, I don't think this will work, but it's worth confirming. If failsafe 1 does not work, then the problem is in one of the /etc/rc* scripts. If failsafe 1 does work, then you know that your /etc/rc* script are OK, at least for runlevel 1.

BTW, do you have another machine next to the machine that is connected to the Internet? If so, then we could do some troubleshooting over IRC. I believe there's a knoppix channel. Will have to look later.

Regards,
- Robert
http://www.cwelug.org/

[Drax946]

The next step is to try failsafe 1, which will put Knoppix in Runlevel 1. You'll know your in runlevel 1 when you get a prompt root@tty1[/]#. From what you've described before, I don't think this will work, but it's worth confirming. If failsafe 1 does not work, then the problem is in one of the /etc/rc* scripts. If failsafe 1 does work, then you know that your /etc/rc* script are OK, at least for runlevel 1.

BTW, do you have another machine next to the machine that is connected to the Internet? If so, then we could do some troubleshooting over IRC. I believe there's a knoppix channel. Will have to look later.

Regards,
- Robert
http://www.cwelug.org/

"failsafe 1" didn't work as you predicted it wouldn't. It seems to freeze or lockup at the same point after the Autoconfig bar does its dance across the screen and is done, advance one line, jump to the center of the line and sit there.

Unfortunately I don't have a 2nd PC handy, but the assistance is much appreciated!

[rwcitek]

"failsafe 1" didn't work as you predicted it wouldn't. It seems to freeze or lockup at the same point after the Autoconfig bar does its dance across the screen and is done, advance one line, jump to the center of the line and sit there.
I suspect the program hwsetup is causing the problem. hwsetup is called from the script /etc/init.d/knoppix-autoconfig. For some background on the linux boot process and boot parameters, type man boot and man bootparam. To pause at the various boot stages, try boot: debug -b 1. In debug mode, knoppix pauses allowing you to change or examine things before proceeding to the next stage. One more thing to try is the nohwsetup cheatcode. I discovered that cheatcode by grepping throught the knoppix-autoconfig file: grep -i bootparam /etc/init.d/knoppix-autoconfig. I just added it to the wiki: http://www.knoppix.net/wiki/Cheat_Codes


Unfortunately I don't have a 2nd PC handy, but the assistance is much appreciated!
Bummer about not having a 2nd machine. Hope the assistance helps.

Regards,
- Robert
http://www.cwelug.org/

[Drax946]

I suspect the program hwsetup is causing the problem. hwsetup is called from the script /etc/init.d/knoppix-autoconfig. For some background on the linux boot process and boot parameters, type man boot and man bootparam. To pause at the various boot stages, try boot: debug -b 1. In debug mode, knoppix pauses allowing you to change or examine things before proceeding to the next stage. One more thing to try is the nohwsetup cheatcode. I discovered that cheatcode by grepping throught the knoppix-autoconfig file: grep -i bootparam /etc/init.d/knoppix-autoconfig. I just added it to the wiki: http://www.knoppix.net/wiki/Cheat_Codes

Bummer about not having a 2nd machine. Hope the assistance helps.

Regards,
- Robert
http://www.cwelug.org/

Adding the nohwsetup to the wiki was definitely a good idea! Before using this cheatcode I could only get some action in the bootup by using failsafe, everything else seemed to just lockup/freeze immediately at a black screen, after Linux kernel was uncompressed and booting, or after the autoconfiguring devices was done with the line down then center. Using "nohwsetup" I was able to use "knoppix" bootparam for the first time and get somewhere!

debug -b 1 = blank screen, says something like: uncompressing kernel "starting to boot kernel", hang/freeze/lockup after the line.
failsafe nohwsetup = boots up in X with nomouse working, ctrl-alt-F2 to get to a prompt to look around and "shutdown -r now" went fine.
knoppix nohwsetup acpi=off = boots up in X with no network possibly no other things too, but the mouse works!
knoppix nohwsetup = blank screen immediate hang/freeze/lockup

I was using the problem BIOS list: "acpi=off noapic pci=bios", but was able to eliminate the last 2 as not needed for the PC. I'd like to try "knoppix nohwsetup testcd" just to see if it will work. I forgot that before I started posting.

I found several other synonyms for some of the bootparms in the same file you mentioned: "idecd" = "atapicd", "nosound" = "noaudio", "floppyconfig" = "floppyconf". It looks as though "myconfig", "floppyconf", "custom" and "config" all take you to the same places but I didn't confirm this. The "nodhcp" bootparam is pretty obvious, but "nomkxf86config" from name alone seems to not configure X?

Robert, you have been a very big help! Not knowing very much about Knoppix, I was really stuck hard and fast!

Now I guess the corrective action so others don't have this problem would be to tear apart "hwsetup" to see where things get dicey. At least now I can boot things up and look around!

-edit: from a quick google on knoppix hwsetup I found where others are also having problems with this program.
-edit: "knoppix nohwsetup acpi=off testcd" works and the cd tested ok.