newbie: Boot failure

[jackbird]

Hi all,

This is my first dip of a toe into linux, so I hope you'll bear with me if I haven't exhausted the troubleshooting options I should have known about.

I'm trying to boot knoppix 3.3 (9/24/03 beta), and it hangs at


apmd[60]: main(): apm_open() failed: no such device.

So I tried booting with the


knoppix lang=us noapm

command, but then the machine POSTs instead of hangs at the same place.


knoppix lang=us failsafe hangs at the same apmd error message as without failsafe.


knoppix lang=us noapm failsafe hangs at "Skipping APM BIOS detection as requested on boot command line".
[code]

Specs:

Dual Athlon MP 2100 on Tyan Tiger MPX (BIOS 4.03d)
1G Mushkin Pc2100, tested and passed with memtest86
AGP GeForce 4 Ti 4200 64MB
PCI GeForce2MX 32 MB
Soundblaster Audigy Gamer OEM
onboard 3Com LAN
USB keyboard (MS office KB), mouse (Intellimouse Explorer 3), and Wacom Intuos2.

[rneff]

Check out this thread:

http://www.knoppix.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=3592&view=next

[jackbird]

Doesn't help.
knoppix lang=us noapm nosmp noapic gets me a POST.

Wait a second - now it booted properly all by itself while I was typing this in on the other machine - is a reboot an expected part of the process?

[rneff]

It rebooted after it was stalled during bootup and worked? That is kindof odd. I do not know.

[jackbird]

yes, it boots fine if I wait for it to auto-startup (although my sound card doesn't work), but any command line (even just lang=us) will cause it to hang. I have verified this on several restarts.

[fingers99]

I don't get it, either. But try appending alsa to the

knoppix lang=us noapm nosmp noapic

line:

knoppix lang=us noapm nosmp noapic alsa

and see if that gets your sound going.

[jackbird]

I can't. It will only boot with no command line at all.

I'm guessing it has something to do with my USB keyboard, and my motherboard's handling of it in DOS mode. I'll dig a PS/2 one out of the closet to test one of these days.