What do you do when failsafe or testcd won't even boot?

[Drax946]

PC: HP Pavilion a705w Celeron 2.9GHz 786MB MS-6577 mATX rev 4.0 (aka Giovani2) i845GV chipset
added nVidia PCI video (set in BIOS as primary) eVGA 4000 MX 128MB

CD: Knoppix 3.8.2-EN (md5 verified CD ok on another PC and other pc was able to boot CD)

BIOS is set up allow CD bootup before HD. PnPOS=no. HP had BIOS update for this model which I thought may help, but it only made things worse it seems.

I receive the Autoconfig bar going across, gets to 100%, cursor jumps to next line (left side as normal), cursor jumps to middle of line, no activity from PC cursor still blinking. This using failsafe. with other cheatcodes the cursor stops blinking. Without the noapm I have to unplug the PC to turn it off for another go at a test.

I've tried:

1) knoppix noapic noagp noscsi nopcmcia acpi=off nousb pci=bios

2) knoppix noaudio nodma mem=256M pci=bios pnpbios=off acpi=off nousb2 noscsi nousb nofirewire nopcmcia noapic noapm noagp xmodule=nv

3) knoppix noaudio nodma mem=256M pci=bios pnpbios=off acpi=off nousb2 noscsi nousb nofirewire nopcmcia noapic noapm noagp xmodule=vesa

4) knoppix testcd (locked up on a blank screen just after it loaded linux.gz vmlinux files and cleared the screen)

5) failsafe

I've never been able to get knoppix or any other linux distro to boot in this PC. Any ideas would be greatly appreciated with the exception of "get rid of that piece of crap and get a real computer" which unfortunately is not an option.

[fingers99]

Suggestions only:

try a google for

your pc linux

(to see if there's a general solution)

set the bios to non plug'n play OS

[Drax946]

PnPOS=no as I posted in previous message. I've been googling on this for quite a while now, since 3.7 came out or a bit before. I've found that there was an issue with the i845 chipset which a patch was developed for, but my understanding was the 2.6 kernel did not require the patch to operate properly. It could be there is additional flakiness in the i845GV which has not been handled yet?

No luck on the search, I only get sites that seem to want to sell me another a705w. However the chipset search seems more fruitful, just many many many links to sift through. Several sites claim SuSe and Mandrake will run fine on this chipset.

[rwcitek]

PC: HP Pavilion a705w Celeron 2.9GHz 786MB MS-6577 mATX rev 4.0 (aka Giovani2) i845GV chipset
added nVidia PCI video (set in BIOS as primary) eVGA 4000 MX 128MB

I've tried:

1) knoppix noapic noagp noscsi nopcmcia acpi=off nousb pci=bios

2) knoppix noaudio nodma mem=256M pci=bios pnpbios=off acpi=off nousb2 noscsi nousb nofirewire nopcmcia noapic noapm noagp xmodule=nv

3) knoppix noaudio nodma mem=256M pci=bios pnpbios=off acpi=off nousb2 noscsi nousb nofirewire nopcmcia noapic noapm noagp xmodule=vesa

Why are you telling the kernel there are 256M when there are 786M?

A couple of more options to try:

1) boot: knoppix -b

2) boot: knoppix init=/bin/bash

Hopefully, the first one will work. If not, try the second.

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

[Drax946]

Why are you telling the kernel there are 256M when there are 786M?

A couple of more options to try:

1) boot: knoppix -b

2) boot: knoppix init=/bin/bash

Hopefully, the first one will work. If not, try the second.

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

The example was 128M and I wasn't sure how much would be taked up by the RAMDisk, so 256M seemed a better choice than the example 128M.

Tried both the "-b" and the "init=/bin/bash" with a resulting empty black screen and a system freeze/hang at that point for each tried individually.

I tried a suggestion from another thread, you may have posted it that included "nomce nosmp" which I added to the list of cheatcodes I first posted. These didn't work either.

I did notice that my floppy drive light comes on during the end of the AutoConfig and doesn't go out until I turn the PC off (Ctrl-Alt-Del doesn't work in any of the cases).

I'm wondering if there is a **full** list of cheatcodes somewhere which holds the answer?

[Harry Kuhman]

There are generally several things to do when a CD will not boot. You've eliminated some issues, but I'll cover them here anyway for the next guy.

• 1) Confirm that md5 sum. You tell us you did this, but it's likely the most common booting problem for people who download from mirrors rather than from Bittorrent.
  
  2) Use Cheat Codes. Again, you indicate that you can't even get far enough to use failsafe (the ultimate cheat code for finding the source of a problem).
  
  3) Burn the CD at a slow speed. People just seem to refuse to accept that this is an issue, but we see cases over and over again where it is the issue. Just because a CD burnt at high speed works on one system does not mean it will work on another. Here are just two of many threads on this issue: http://www.knoppix.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=17788 and http://www.knoppix.net/forum/viewtop...?p=78925#78925 .
  
  4) Use a boot manager like SBM or XOSL that will boot a CD, even if your BIOS has issues with all or some bootable CDs. SBM runs from hard disk MBR or floppy. XOSL must be installed on the hard disk (best to give it it's own small partition).

[rwcitek]

Tried both the "-b" and the "init=/bin/bash" with a resulting empty black screen and a system freeze/hang at that point for each tried individually.

It is possible that your machine has a tough time with your burned CD. But for fun, try one more option: boot: failsafe -b 1 You should get a prompt that ends with " ... normal startup):" Just press Enter and you should get a bash shell prompt that says: root@console[~]# This is the "emergency mode" prompt. Do you get that prompt? To restart, press the reset switch or power switch on your machine.

I'm wondering if there is a **full** list of cheatcodes somewhere which holds the answer?

There are several places to find cheatcodes, including the CD iteself, but I don't know if any of them are "full". The one I like is on the wiki page: http://www.knoppix.net/wiki/Cheat_Codes

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

[Drax946]

There are generally several things to do when a CD will not boot. You've eliminated some issues, but I'll cover them here anyway for the next guy.

• 1) Confirm that md5 sum. You tell us you did this, but it's likely the most common booting problem for people who download from mirrors rather than from Bittorrent.
  
  2) Use Cheat Codes. Again, you indicate that you can't even get far enough to use failsafe (the ultimate cheat code for finding the source of a problem).
  
  3) Burn the CD at a slow speed. People just seem to refuse to accept that this is an issue, but we see cases over and over again where it is the issue. Just because a CD burnt at high speed works on one system does not mean it will work on another. Here are just two of many threads on this issue: http://www.knoppix.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=17788 and http://www.knoppix.net/forum/viewtop...?p=78925#78925 .
  
  4) Use a boot manager like SBM or XOSL that will boot a CD, even if your BIOS has issues with all or some bootable CDs. SBM runs from hard disk MBR or floppy. XOSL must be installed on the hard disk (best to give it it's own small partition).

Thanks for being helpful.

In my particular care:

I downloaded using Bittorrent and also verified md5 using winmd5sum as well as using "knoppix testcd" on a PC which could boot the CD, and everything indicated the ISO and CD are fine.

CD is a 700MB 4x CD-RW so it was burned at 4x. The other 2 PCs I tested the CD on booted up just fine with no cheatcodes needed. PC I'm trying to boot with it is the same I burned the CD.

The BIOS finds the CD to be bootable and boots the CD, so I don't believe I would need a boot manager to boot it since the BIOS is already getting the CD started and passes off control.

The failure is in the Knoppix boot process somewhere. When Knoppix attempts to AutoConfig the devices. I find it interedting that the floppy light stays on from the latter portion of the autoconfig to lockup.

Thanks again.

[Harry Kuhman]

...
Thanks for being helpful.
....The BIOS finds the CD to be bootable and boots the CD, so I don't believe I would need a boot manager to boot it since the BIOS is already getting the CD started and passes off control. ...
Thanks again.

I knew the first 2 were not your issues, just wanted to cover the bases so the info would be in this post for the few readers who actually search rather than post the same questions over and over again. I had really expected the 3rd point was going to help you, but you're right, if you use a normal 700 meg CDRW then that imposes the speed limit on you already. It's very strange that you can't do a failsafe boot (not that it always gets everything right, but it usually helps you locate the problem area),

One more thought I can offer, for what little it's worth. Lots of people seem to be having more problems with 3.8.x than with previous versions. In my own case the computer that I normally run Knoppix on likes 3.8 more than 3.7 and I no longer need any cheat codes. But two other of my systems are not as happy with it and I've stayed with 3.7 on them. And I've decided to stop giving away any free Knoppix CD's until I see some sign that this is improving (not that I had given away a lot, but I had given away a small number of them). I just don't want to be associated with bad Knoppix experiences for new users. So my thought is that you might want to try getting a copy of 3.7 and seeing if it works any better for you. Yea, it's not the latest and greatest, but actually working has it's good points. If 3.7 does work for you that might help give you more insight on your 3.8 problems. At the very least you would have something that you could run while waiting for an improved new release. And if 3.7 doesn't work for you either, then you'll know not to take my advice in the future. Ad you'll know it's not a 3.8 issue.

[rwcitek]

If 3.7 does work for you that might help give you more insight on your 3.8 problems. At the very least you would have something that you could run while waiting for an improved new release. And if 3.7 doesn't work for you either, then you'll know not to take my advice in the future. Ad you'll know it's not a 3.8 issue.

Good idea. Yes, definitely try 3.7. One big difference between 3.7 and 3.8 was that 3.7 used the 2.4 kernel while 3.8 used the 2.6 kernel. Many drivers changed because of the kernel change.

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