Problem: GX620 boot from CD problem

[rwcitek]

I'll be downloading and burning 3.8.1 later today and giving it a try.

When you do be sure to burn at the slowest speed possible, preferably <8x.

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

[mensan]

I am having the exact same kernel panic with the Knoppix 4.0.2 CD on my GX620. From looking at the BIOS, it appears that the HD is SATA, but the DVD-ROM is PATA and the primary master drive. It doesnt seem like there has been much progress in getting this to work. I have even considered remastering an image with custom kernel, new x.org for the 945G, etc. but would really rather avoid that. How has everyone fared since their last posts?

Any help?

[mensan]

Well just to let everyone know. I got around the kernel panic by using the following boot option (4.0.2 CD with Dell GX620):

hdc=noprobe

It will get you to full desktop. Now to get the video driver working, this will take a remaster with the latest x.org development release.

-men$an


EDIT: There is a change required to the BIOS though, that I didnt mention. Go into Drives -> SATA Operation and change from "Normal" to "Combination" ! ! !

[rwcitek]

Well just to let everyone know. I got around the kernel panic by using the following boot option (4.0.2 CD with Dell GX620):

hdc=noprobe

Glad to hear you got Knoppix working. Thanks for posting your solution. Out of curiosity, what is /dev/hdc? The SATA, the PATA, or something else?

It will get you to full desktop. Now to get the video driver working, this will take a remaster with the latest x.org development release.

You may not have to remaster. You may be able to get away with using a persistent disk image (PDI). The general strategy would be to boot into text mode, create a PDI sufficiently large (e.g. 1GB), reboot into text mode again, attach the PDI, rework X.org, test out the video driver. Once you get X11 working, remove unneed files from the PDI , resize it, and use it whenever you boot Knoppix.

I would imagine that you can even remaster a new CD given an old CD and PDI, but I haven't tried that, yet.

Good luck and let us know how it goes.

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

[mensan]

Good to see a fellow Missourian around! (Go Redbirds!)

hdc is the SATA hard drive. Since I dont need access to it from Knoppix, this is a solution for me. If this is not the case for others (access is needed to the HDD), then maybe some information about how correctly change a remastered kernel can be gleaned from here:

http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~ushankar/linux-dell.html

The "Hardware Support Detail" section may provide good info on getting the SATA and PATA stuff figured out.

Thanks for the tip on the PDI, but since creating a persistent image on disk is not a realistic option for me, I am going with the remaster. I am looking to put development X.org (6.8.99.901), and latest kernel (2.6.14.2) on there in hope of getting the 945G graphics supported, plus we can always use a newer kernel, right? I will let you know how the remaster goes, and if it works well, and I can find a place to host it, I will make the .iso available for download.

Hopefully I will have more to report after the weekend.

-men$an

[mensan]

Well, after a few attempts at a remaster, I have a CD that boots, but then it fails on trying to start the Xserver. I updated the xserver-common, xserver-xorg, and xserver-xfree86 packacges to 6.8.99.901 (the 6.9 RC1), and I must be missing a link or something somewhere. When it tries to start the Xserver (I have an Nvidia card in this test machine, not the Dell GX620, so "nv" driver should be used), it detects it as Nvidia, and says it is starting XFree86(nv), but then fails out of that, then tries fbdev and vesa, neither of which work. It then says that no acceptable Xserver could be found for my card, which is normally supported. So, I am wondering if I am missing a link from XFree86 somewhere to Xorg, or something else.

Any thoughts? Anyone else upgraded the X server on Knoppix before? If no one posts much in a couple of days, I will start a new thread, dont want to hijack.


-men$an

[mensan]

Hi All,

So the latest problem I have found is that my USB flash drive is not working on the Dell GX620. It is apparent form the dmesg (as well as that my USB mouse and keyboard work) that the USB 2.0 drivers are being loaded, it looks though, like the following line from dmesg might be a clue:

mtrr: no more MTRRs available

which occurs near the bottom. Anyone else having this problem? Any ideas?


-men$an

[mensan]

alright, well to get my USB flash drive to work and get around the MTRR error i posted above, all i had to do was load the ehci_hcd module, so the following will do that:

modprobe ehci_hcd

which must be done as root. now to find a good place to put that command in a script.


-men$an

[sundry_50]

A recent live cd copy (3.7 I think) failed to boot on the gx260 but works on other machines. An older copy of live cd (3.3) and the current live dvd boot but most usb ports are inactive. I find that the usb ports on the keyboard are active using the live 3.3CD and the live current dvd. Will try the latest post from mensan soon.

[kgndb]

My computer is not the same as yours but I thought my solution might help you or at least give you some ideas.

I have a Microstar International MSI865GV Hetis (Intel 865GV chipset) with a 2.8GHz Pentium 4. I put a 160GB Seagate SATA drive and a Sony DRU-530A DVD writer in it. I have been running Windows XP and Knoppix 3.4 with the 2.4 kernel since I bought it in May of last year. I downloaded Knoppix 4.0.2 when it came out and tried to boot it on my machine. When the initial screen came up I just hit return at the boot prompt but then it said it couldn't find the CD drive and dropped me into the primitve shell. I tried creating a floppy with the driver for my DVD writer, booted expert mode and told it to load and autoprobe for the device but it couldn't find it. At that point I thought the problem might be in the BIOS configuration.

I had originally gotten the SATA drive to work by setting the BIOS to Native Mode with the SATA interface as the first and second controller making the PATA interface the third controller. It worked for XP and for Knoppix 3.4 with the 2.4 kernel but after a couple experiments I found that changing to Legacy Mode and making the PATA interface the first controller and the SATA interface the second and third controller the DVD drive showed up as the primary master and the SATA became the secondary master allowing my system to boot and run Knoppix 4.0.2 from the CD. I think that the code probing for the drive couldn't find it when it was on the third controller.

When I was able to boot from the CD I installed Knoppix to my SATA drive but had the same problem as twistedalpha with a kernel panic (Error after Hdd install). I was able to solve that problem on my machine by installing GRUB. I posted a reply in that thread with my solution to the problem.