crc error system halted

[prospero]

i have a compaq 7470 with no hard drive, 128m ram and a k6 500mhz processor that I am trying to run knoppix 3.1 if i try no boot options it hangs on "loading vmlinuz......." if I boot using knoppix vga=normal i get:

loading vmlinuz ........................
loading miniroot.gz................
ready.
uncompressing linux ...

crc error

--System halted

i've tried all the combinations of cheatcodes i can think of, including noswap, since there is no hard drive. but i always hang at the same point.

if anyone has some insight into this problem, i would really appreciate it. thanks.

[rickenbacherus]

Compaq's are apparently notorious for not working too well w/ Knoppix. Just do a serch for Compaq here in the forums and you'll see what I mean. I assume you have booted w/ testcd & also checked the md5sum of your .iso? Oh and 'failsafe too right? (sorry - standard questions).

Assuming none of the above work, how about some hardware specs?

Oh and have you tried booting 'expert'? You have alot of control that way.

[prospero]

thanks for the reply. i have tried testcd, expert and failsafe. i've also tried knoppix 2 to get test mode with no results.

hmmm, what hardware specs would be useful? it's a compaq 7470 with no harddrive, 128M of ram, k6 500mhz processor and 8m of video ram.

i don't know what md5sum is. how would i go about checking that? i do know that i've used the same cd on several other systems with no problem.

i'm guessing that even though i specify noswap, knoppix really wants a hard drive there. i wonder if other people have been successful booting knoppix with no hard drive?

[Stephen]

i'm guessing that even though i specify noswap, knoppix really wants a hard drive there. i wonder if other people have been successful booting knoppix with no hard drive?

I've booted it from a Cyrix 200 based box with 64mb ram original ati vga card and paper white mono vga with no hard drive. It is just a bit slow (at least a minute or two) loading a program but it will surf the net fine.

[rickenbacherus]

thanks for the reply. i have tried testcd, expert and failsafe. i've also tried knoppix 2 to get test mode with no results.

hmmm, what hardware specs would be useful? it's a compaq 7470 with no harddrive, 128M of ram, k6 500mhz processor and 8m of video ram.
What kind of video card? I really don't mean to make stupid suggestions but you did try stringing the cheat codes together right? Like so:

knoppix lang=us wheelmouse noswap noagp noapic

i don't know what md5sum is. how would i go about checking that? i do know that i've used the same cd on several other systems with no problem.
If it works on other systems it's probably OK but to check the md5sum do a:


md5sum /path/to/iso/knoppix3.1.iso

That will get you a crazy looking number to compare to the md5 sums on the mirrors.


i'm guessing that even though i specify noswap, knoppix really wants a hard drive there. i wonder if other people have been successful booting knoppix with no hard drive?

Like Stephen I too have been able to boot with no hdd. It simply tells you that it can't find a dos partition (i forget the exact message). I wonder what Knoppix thinks of that K6? Does it have an onboard cache? If so can you disable it in the BIOS? Speaking of BIOS- have you changed anything there?

[Dave_Bechtel]

--You should download the latest Knoppix version, which as of this writing is currently ( ftp://ftp.uni-kl.de/pub/linux/knoppix/KNOPPIX_V3.2-2003-04-18-EN.iso .) If there is a crc error, you likely have a bad ISO.

--In addition, if you want to run w/o a hard drive I would seriously consider upgrading to at least 256Meg of RAM; 512 would be even better, 'cuz RAM is cheap. No HD == no swap capability.


i have a compaq 7470 with no hard drive, 128m ram and a k6 500mhz processor that I am trying to run knoppix 3.1 if i try no boot options it hangs on "loading vmlinuz......." if I boot using knoppix vga=normal i get:

loading vmlinuz ........................
loading miniroot.gz................
ready.
uncompressing linux ...

crc error

--System halted

i've tried all the combinations of cheatcodes i can think of, including noswap, since there is no hard drive. but i always hang at the same point.

if anyone has some insight into this problem, i would really appreciate it. thanks.

[prospero]

hey guys,

thanks for all the good tips. i don't think it's a bad .iso, however, because i've used the same cd successfully on about five other machines.

also, i've been stringing the cheatcodes together and have tried just about every combination i could find listed, including expert. all to no avail.

i have also tried putting a nvidia card in and specifying that the kernel use nvidia, but still have the same hanging problem.

any ideas?

[prospero]

tried 3.2, got a different error than the crc error:

invalid compressed format (err=1)

I keep crapping out right before the it goes into auto-configuration. i'm just about ready to give up on ever getting knoppix going on this machine. does any one have anything that i could try?

[rickenbacherus]

I haven't seen mention of whether or not you had changed anything in the BIOS.

[prospero]

hmm, no i didn't really change anything in the bios. compaq bios is pretty crappy, everything is "automatic" and not really open to modification. it does know that there is no hard drive and seems to recognize the cd and floppy as the only boot devices. is there something you think i should be looking for in the bios?

[Dave_Bechtel]

--This is a long shot, but have you tried switching out the CD drive?


tried 3.2, got a different error than the crc error:

invalid compressed format (err=1)

I keep crapping out right before the it goes into auto-configuration. i'm just about ready to give up on ever getting knoppix going on this machine. does any one have anything that i could try?

[goba]

...or laser lens cleaning?

[rickenbacherus]

hmm, no i didn't really change anything in the bios. compaq bios is pretty crappy, everything is "automatic" and not really open to modification. it does know that there is no hard drive and seems to recognize the cd and floppy as the only boot devices. is there something you think i should be looking for in the bios?

I've heard alot of bad things about Compaq's and their lousy BIOS. Bummer you can't make too many changes. It is quite common to disable Plug n Play when running Linux. Also if you can, disable the automatic assignment of IRQ's. Turn off Auto Power Mgmt. If I think of anything else I'll post back.

[prospero]

hey guys,

still no luck. i've tried three different cdrom drives, each of which works with knoppix in another machine, so the cdrom doesn't seem to be the problem.

i also tried to disable auto IRQ assignment, but wasnt able to. i tried turning of pci bus mastering, and instead of hanging at loading vmlinuz it goes through the boot routine, but hangs at the auto-configuration portion, right when tux should show up at the top.

i've let it run for a while, just to be sure it was hanging and not just taking a really long time, but it is definitely hanging.

i've tried just about everything i can think of, maybe this machine just wasn't meant to run knoppix.

[rickenbacherus]

My last guess is leaving pci bus mastering disabled and then booting with failsafe It looks like turning pci bus mastering off got you a little farther anyway. That's at least somewhat promising. Maybe try removing your NIC & soundcard. It looks like there is some device Knoppix no likey.

gluck