Advice? Knoppix 5.1.1 fails mid-boot from CD

[kwc]

I've downloaded Knoppix 5.1.1 from two different sources and burned CDs. Both begin to boot and then fail in the same way.

I'm on a 2.8 ghz notebook PC on which Windows XP Home is currently installed but somehow screwed up (won't boot) and that's what brought me to Knoppix.

I get a long screen explaining the problem.

Here's how it starts:

Oops: 0002 [#1]
PREEMP SNP

....

And the final thing it says is:

<0> Kernel panic - not syncing:
Attempted to kill init!


-----------------

Any idea what I need to do?

Grateful for the help.

Best,
kenwinston

[kwc]

UPDATE:

I've been able to boot Knoppix from both CDs on another computer. So obviously the problem is with the computer. What other information do you need?

I could try booting again on the bad computer and wait for it to fail and copy more of the information that the page displays -- but it's a LOT of details. Am hoping that what I've provided so far is enough to give a clue.

Thanks,
kwc

[Harry Kuhman]

...I've been able to boot Knoppix from both CDs on another computer. So obviously the problem is with the computer. ....
What speed was the disc burnt at? If the disc was not burnt at a low speed I can't agree with this. Of course, there certainly could be an issue with the computer, or you may just need to find the proper cheat codes, but we frequently see high speed burns that work fine on one computer but don't boot right on another system.

[kwc]

I THINK it was 16x, Harry. Would that constitute high speed?

Thanks,
kwc

[Harry Kuhman]

I THINK it was 16x, Harry. Would that constitute high speed?....
I've learned the hard way that any CD must be burned at a slow speed. I Use 4x in almost all cases. It would really be nice to be able to burn at 56x, 52x, 48x or even 16x, but burns like this induce errors or the disc. In most cases these errors are hidden by the error correcting code included with CD's (over 12% of the CD space is used to encode error correction data for most encoding formats), but that doesn't mean that the burn was good, just that it was correctable. I prefer to depend on the error correction information to fix errors that come from scratches, other degrading of the data, or marginal read issues than to correct errors created at burn time and already using the error correction data. For reasons that I don't fully understand, Knoppix seems to be very sensitive to read errors during the boot process, so it's important to burn the disc slowly to avoid this problem. I can give you links to several past discussions of this in these forums if you want them. see: http://www.knoppix.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=17788 and http://www.knoppix.net/forum/viewtopic.php?p=78582#78582 And http://www.knoppix.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=17064

So in all honesty while I wouldn't really expect 16x to be a big problem, certainly not as bad as 52x, and I don't know at all that this is even a burning speed problem (try booting with the failsafe cheat code to see if it boots that way), I would still make a 4x copy just to avoid fighting with a problem that might be there but can easily be avoided.

[kwc]

Harry, do you mind being really elementary with me and explaining how to boot with the fail-safe cheat code?

Thanks,
kwc

[kwc]

I may have found it. Looks like I type: boot: failsafe debug -b 3

Not sure when and where I type that, but suppose that will become clear to me as I attempt the reboot in a moment.

kwc

[kwc]

OK. Failsafe failed, too. Here is the "EIP" message:

EIP: [<c01b199b>] sysfs_get_name+0x47/04c SS:ESP 0068:dfe8le28

and that is followed with the "kernel panic - not syncing, attempted to kill init!" message.

Is there some way for me to look up what all that might mean?

Thanks,
kwc

[Harry Kuhman]

I may have found it. Looks like I type: boot: failsafe debug -b 3
When typing in boot parameters, one can stack multiple parameters. I'm not sure where you got the advice to include debug -b 3 or what they do, but just failsafe should be enough. Hit F2 at the boot prompt (or F3, or switch between screens with F2/F3) for more information, or read the cheatcode document that comes down with a BitTorrent download, or see the cheatcodes section of the wiki. And if you didn't use BitTorrent then I sure hope that you tested if you got a good download by the md5 checksum test (although if the disc works in another computer then the md5 sum is very likely good).

[kwc]

I've been burning a 4x CD and on verify got the message that it found an I/O error that it could not fix. So I'll be doing it again. Suspect that MAY be the problem, Harry.

kwc

[Harry Kuhman]

I use Nero, always verify, and you should always be able to get a verified burn. If it fails, the disc has a problem. Things to try include different brand of media, CDRW rather than CDR (avoids wasting more CDS but also using CDRW media changes the read gain at boot time that can help bypass some read errors), and burning on a different system (although if you have to do this it may indicate a CD drive problem that is also affecting the boot process). Also be sure that you are using 700 meg media; yes we have had long posts from a user who finally acknowledged that they were trying to burn the CD to 650 meg media.

[kwc]

Harry wrote:

I sure hope that you tested if you got a good download by the md5 checksum test (although if the disc works in another computer then the md5 sum is very likely good

No, I didn't run that. I don't understand it. I did get this from a Knoppix html download mirror listed on the official site and it did work on another computer. Still, can you direct me to a tutorial explaining how to use the md5 sum image to check it? I did download that, but have no clue as to how to use it.

Thanks,
kwc

[Harry Kuhman]

No, I didn't run that. I don't understand it. ...
Answer #1 (http://www.knoppix.net/wiki/User:Harry_Kuhman)

[kwc]

Solved. Finally.

Turns out a 1 gig ram card had failed. So programs/operating systems loading from CD (or harddrive) would start to load, start writing to/mapping one ram card and then when they moved to the second one (which has gone faulty) the computer would crash, reboot.

Had nothing to do with linux, knoppix, Windows. And only took me about 60 hours to figure out. And I only did that with the help of a very savvy tech who had a program that was able to stop the screen and let us read the blue-screen-of-death messages that were flashing before our eyes as the computer would reboot each time.

Popping out the defective memory immediately fixed the problem.

Thanks for all the help here.

Best,
kwc

[Harry Kuhman]

It might have been handy to know that if you boot the Knoppix disc and type in memtest at the boot prompt that you will run memtest86. That is talked about many places in the forums, in the wiki, and in the documentation that comes with a torrent download. We didn't get that far because we were still talking about things like did you confirm you had a good download with the md5 test. Glad that you got it resolved though.

[rubbertoe]

I was having a similar issue booting from various live CDs. I suspected the memory and ran memtest through 3 times and found no errors. I then decided to run it overnight, yet still no errors. Upon realizing I had some extra DIMMs laying around I swapped out the memory and voila! Frustrating to say the least. So the moral of this tail, memtest is a great tool yet don't rely on it 100% as with everything.