Knoppix won't boot on my Micron PC

[Synthpopalooza]

Hello ... maybe you folks can help me out on this one.

I am unable to get Knoppix to boot properly on my PC. During the botup, the Penguin does not appear, and I get a message saying I have passed an invalid mode, and it gives a list of six resolutions ... when I choose one, it will go through the loading process, then when X starts, the screen goes into a weird pattern of colours.

My PC is a Micron PC Millenia ... Intel Pentium III processor ... 734 Mhz, 512 MB ram ... I have had to boot using the acpi=force cheatcode because the BIOS is from 2000. I also have had to use the noscsi cheatcode, because otherwise knoppix hangs while reading the scsi devices. i have also tried using the vga=normal cheatcode, which stops the invalid mode passing ... but the results are no different.

I think the problem may be with my video card ... Device Manager on Windows says that it is a Intel(R) 82810E Graphics Controller. The video card seems to want to use someting called VESA VGA.

Any ideas? :) Help would be most appreciated.

[rwcitek]

I am unable to get Knoppix to boot properly on my PC.
... I think the problem may be with my video card
... Any ideas?
What version of Knoppix are you using? Have you looked at the cheatcodes page, in particular, the Tips&Tricks (http://www.knoppix.net/wiki/Cheat_Codes#Tips.26Tricks) section?

My guess is that you'll need two cheatcodes: the vga= and the xmodule=. Unfortunately, you'll probably have to determine the appropriate values empirically. For vga=, 0 (zero) will always work, but values in the range of 784-795 may also work. For xmodule=, try "vesa" or "fbdev".

Be sure to let us know what you try and how it goes.

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

[Synthpopalooza]

Hi ...

Actually, I tried the cheatcodes listed on that link, and none of them have worked. I will try the vga settings tonight when I get home from work and let you know how it goes. :)

[rwcitek]

Actually, I tried the cheatcodes listed on that link, and none of them have worked.
Which brings us back to the first question: which version of Knoppix are you using? Also, as it says in the Tips&Tricks section, be sure to "tell us which of the above boot commands you tried, and how far in the boot process you were able to get."

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

[Synthpopalooza]

Hi ...

I am using Knoppix v 3.7 ... although I also have copies of 3.4 (from the Knoppix hacks book) and 3.9, it's 3.7 I am currently trying to boot up with.

With each of the cheatcodes mentioned above, I am still getting through the boot process but then the screen turns all funny and flickers with those color patterns. Also, I've discovered that I have to add the cheatcodes noscsi and acpi=force to my knoppix boot command. Without these, knoppix hangs on bootup.

I'm still at work, but I will give the new vga and xmodule settings a go tonight when I get home. Here's hoping. :)

[Synthpopalooza]

Okay, I have made some progress. I tried the sequence shown below:

knoppix noscsi acpi=force xserver=XF86_SVGA

Here's what happened and what I did ...

Tux the penguin still does not appear.

It still came up with "You passed an invalid mode number" and a list of selections.
I typed "scan" and ENTER, the screen blanked, then a larger list of modes came up.
I selected the one marked "b" (The very last one) ...
the boot process continued normally, and then the Knoppix screen comes up ...

Problem is, though, the screen is now in a very blocky low resolution of (I think) 640x320 or something. The letters are very huge and so is the taskbar. Basically this is unusable in this super-low resolution, but I think maybe I am on the right tack? Any further hints would be heplful. :)

[Synthpopalooza]

Ok, I got it to work ... seems that when I boot in expert mode and let it configure my video card settings for me, that it seems to work properly. :) Thanks for all your help!

[rwcitek]

Ok, I got it to work ... seems that when I boot in expert mode and let it configure my video card settings for me, that it seems to work properly. :) Thanks for all your help!
Glad to hear you got it working. So that we can point future Micron users to your posts, can you give us a bit more detail? For example, how did you boot into expert mode? As the expert mode asked questions what answers did you give? In particular, what options did you select for configuring your video card?

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

[Synthpopalooza]

Well, it was simple actually ... at the boot prompt I just used "expert" instead of "knoppix" ... I had to put "acpi=force" after it, because my BIOS is from 2000. (expert acpi=force).

As I stepped thrugh the boot process I requested that the SCSI modules not load (otherwise knoppix would hang) ... it came up with the invalid mode number error, but as before, I typed "scan" and enter ... this time I chose the resolution marked as "a" (I haven't yet tried it with any of the other choices)

I was asked if I wanted to configure the sound card, the mouse, etc., and I just kept replying "N" to each one until I got to the video card, to which I responded "Y". The screen changed, and I seem to remember it asking me if I was using an Intel i810 card with some sort of XFree86 module ... whatever it was, I responded "Yes". It returned to the boot screen, where it presumably finished configuring my video card, and then the Knoppix desktop came up in the correct resolution! No problems ... and everything seems to be working correctly.

I've also found you can use "expert26" instead of "expert" which causes Knoppix to boot with the linux 2.6 kernel. Haven't tried it yet tho. I also remember an Xfree86 module being mentioned, so I am thinking it might be what should be used in the xmodule cheatcode. I may try that as well sometime to see if it makes the boot process quicker.

It works great! Thanks for everyone's help.

[rwcitek]

Well, it was simple actually ... at the boot prompt I just used "expert" instead of "knoppix" ... I had to put "acpi=force" after it, because my BIOS is from 2000. (expert acpi=force). ...
I first want to say thanks for posting back.

Given your description, I'm curious to know, are you booting each time using "expert acpi=force"? If you are, try booting with this:

boot: knoppix acpi=force noscsi vga=0 xmodule=i810.

If you do, please let us know how it goes.

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

[Synthpopalooza]

Actually, I just tried using the boot code you provided ... knoppix hangs right after the "Autoconfiguring devices" comes up. However, I have noticed several times that this has happened various times to me tonight when I tried to recreate what I did in expert mode, before it finally worked. Any ideas what would be causing this freeze?

An idea I had for why this was happening is: I have my PC connected to a router with 2 other PC's ... the freeze would always happen if one of the PC's wasn't booted. I tried booting the third PC and then Knoppix booted properly (using my expert mode of course) ... does this sound right to you?

[rwcitek]

Actually, I just tried using the boot code you provided ... knoppix hangs right after the "Autoconfiguring devices" comes up. However, I have noticed several times that this has happened various times to me tonight when I tried to recreate what I did in expert mode, before it finally worked. Any ideas what would be causing this freeze? ... does this sound right to you?
Sometimes working, sometimes not working. No, that doesn't sound right. This is beginning to sound like a bad CD burn. You may want to test the CD:

boot: failsafe testcd 0

Also, it may be worthwhile burning another CD at a slow sped, < 8x.

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

[tdjokic]

I have 1 single PC, with ADSL conection, sometimes DHCP takes very long time before going on.

the freeze would always happen if one of the PC's wasn't booted if this happens again and again it can be a reason.

[rwcitek]

I have 1 single PC, with ADSL conection, sometimes DHCP takes very long time before going on.
Yes, but not getting an IP address should not cause Knoppix to freeze up. In other words, even if the ethernet cable is disconnected, Knoppix should boot just fine.

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

[Synthpopalooza]

I have 1 single PC, with ADSL conection, sometimes DHCP takes very long time before going on.
if this happens again and again it can be a reason.


About how long does it take before the boot finishes, in your experience? Maybe I just need to let it finish?

[rwcitek]

About how long does it take before the boot finishes, in your experience? Maybe I just need to let it finish?
Here are my timings booting with boot: knoppix debug -b 1
stage 1: 30 seconds
stage 2: 5 more seconds
stage 3: 5 more seconds
"emergency mode": 10 more seconds
runlevel 1: 80 more seconds

So total boot time: 2 minutes 10 seconds. This does not count booting into runlevel 5 (graphics mode with KDE) . Also, this is using Knoppix 3.8.2 in a Virtual PC environment emulating a 630 MHz processor and 256 MB RAM.

What timings do you get?

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