Boot hangs just before Penguin display...

[a1an_g]

Hope someone can help.

I was given an old Sony Vaio PCG-C1VE, no floppy or CD, 112MB of Ram, camera, USB, PCMCIA, Firewire, letter-box shaped screen (1280x480), Crusoe cpu, runs Windows ME. It has a 12GB disk partitioned as an 8GB C: drive and a 4GB D: drive.

I thought it would be nice to be able to run Knoppix on it. I have a working v3.3 CD and I've managed to put the big KNOPPIX file onto the D: drive in a directory called KNOPPIX (I used a borrowed USB CD drive; can't boot from it however). I've also made a boot floppy on another machine and copied all the files to D:\BOOT (I had to go via the internet for that one).

I then patched WinME so that I can boot into Real-Dos mode with a nice little boot menu, and I downloaded Loadlin v1.6 and put that into D:\BOOT too.

So far so good.

So I power on, my (not Knoppix's) boot menu displays, I go into DOS and enter commands like:-

D:
cd BOOT
loadlin vmlinuz initrd=miniroot.gz init=/etc/init lang=en mem=112M ramdisk_size=100000 vga=ask <various other options>

I *think* it then successfully loads vmlinuz and miniroot.gz (I see lots of dots briefly then the screen clears) and, because I've specified vga=ask, I get a little text menu offering about 8 possible modes (80x24, etc...). The problem is that, no matter what mode I set, the screen then blanks and nothing else happens. No disk activity, nothing.

What I *believe* should happen is that I get the Penguin logo at the top left followed by a set of messages about hardware auto-detect etc.

I've tried quite a lot of various options (based on the Knoppix cheat codes; noapm, noacpi, nodma, noscsi, etc) but nothing seems to make any difference. I'd be very grateful for suggestions.

Thanks for your time, Alan

[a1an_g]

Hello again,

I just got a copy of the v3.7 distro from Linux Format magazine's DVD and transferred that onto my Vaio. Same result as before.

Does anyone know what the sequence of events is after the video mode gets set? I've been looking for a clue on the sources site and on the KNOPPIX CD but as yet with no luck. Some idea of what order of device probing happens or, even better, which scripts I should be looking at would be gratefully received.

Thanks, Alan

[atrick-pay]

Sounds a lot like my problem, My problems was I using Bootit NG and
Knoppix won't work an till I set the CD as first boot drive,
even though BootIt NG fools every thing else.

Can you borrow one of the Sony PCMCIA CD drives
so you can just boot off the cd and then install it?
There is a C1 forum
http://www.farstand.com/cgi-bin/pcg-c1/Forum.exe
(Wish I had my little C1XS back!)

[a1an_g]

Thanks for the info atrick -- especially that forum which I hadn't seen before.

I am, of course, trying to do this on a tight (nil) budget so I'm not keen to buy any equipment. My latest idea is to remove the disk from the Vaio and use a USB drive caddie, that I can borrow from work, to connect it to my desktop. Then I should be able to run Knoppix on the desktop and issue lilo config commands for the notebook disk (I hope).

It all sounds very dodgy but at least once I get the notebook disk connected to my desktop I can also backup the existing partitions before potentially destroying them.

It's a shame I haven't been able to get Loadlin to work. My recent investigations have led me to the conclusion that either:

a) Loadlin is hanging during some sort of cpou mode switch
b) Loading of vmlinuz or initrd.gz is overwriting some special I/O buffer or address
c) There is some sort of device being probed very early on in the startup which hangs for Knoppix

I have heard rumours that the PCG-C1VE disk may be hard to extract and may not fit a standard laptop disk caddie. I'm also not 100% sure I know how to configure that disk using lilo so that when I put it back in the Vaio it will boot into either Dos (on the C: partition) or compressed Knoppix (stored on the D: partition).

Any helpful suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Alan

[Gralfus]

I have an old laptop and had success by using the boot "cheat" codes of
knoppix nodma noscsi

However, I have a tower that won't get past the penguin logo regardless of the codes I use.

[a1an_g]

I have, finally, managed to boot Knoppix 3.7 on my little Sony Vaio PCG-C1VE. It wasn't easy and it wasn't pretty.

Basically what I had to do was download a copy of GRUB4DOS (which I found a link to in an article about the Poor Man's Install on the wiki pages). The article was actually about booting from an NTFS partition but I ignored that part.

I took the files grub.exe and menu.lst and put them into C:\.

I then modified config.sys and autoexec.bat so that I had a GRUB boot menu item that would run grub.exe with the (modified) parameters in menu.lst. I also copied linux24 and minirt24.gz into C:\.

I rebooted and chose the GRUB option from my boot menu and it worked!! (It found KNOPPIX on my D: drive -- which came up as /dev/hda5 for some reason). It even automounts my Easydisk USB key (as /dev/sdb1) correctly.

It wasn't a perfect setup by any means but at least now I'm out of that chicken-and-egg situation of needing linux to install linux that I was in before.

Things I need to look at:-

1. Knoppix is searching for lots and lots of scsi devices before finding /dev/hda5 -- I think I can speed that up by tuning the options in menu.lst.
2. I haven't got the built-in camera to work yet.
3. I had to setup a knoppix.swp file in C:\ before I could run some of the larger apps (Like KStars). I need to sort out an automatic swapon for that or maybe a proper swap partition.
4. I need to look at creating a persistent home directory for the knoppix user (and also whether I want to move KNOPPIX somewhere else; at present both hda1 and hda5 get automounted as read-only).
5. I might even do a proper install next. Perhaps ditch WinME... Need to make sure I can still use the modem/network card first.
6. I need to sort out X so it displays at 1024x480 rather than the 640x480 its doing right now (I have very fat penguins).

Thanks for the advice and hints via email and on here. If anyone wants more detail then send me an email and I'll try to answer if I can.

All the best, Alan