Kernel Panic booting Knoppix 3.8.1/4.02 on Pentium II system
Hi,
I have an old Pentium II system running Windows 98. I'm trying to boot up into Knoppix on it. I have a 3.8.1 disc I burned a year ago which I have used in many other systems (I'm going to download and burn the latest to give that a go as well).
When I boot with no cheat codes, it loads the kernel then gets as far as the screen where Tux appears then there is an error message which disappears too quickly for me to read and the machine reboots.
I tried the mem=128M code which produced the same result.
I tried failsafe which produced a kernel panic:
Kernel Panic - not syncing: Fatal Exception in interrupt
Call stack:
update_process_times
timer_interrupt
handle_IRQ_event
__do_IRQ
do_IRQ
common_interrupt
default_idle
default_idle
cpu_idle
start_kernel
My machine details:
Intel Pentium II 266
128 MB RAM
Intel i440 motherboard
ATI rage II AGP graphics
Yamaha OPL3 sound
Realtek RT8139 NIC
Any other details needed?
Thanks
Rob
Kernel Panic booting Knoppix 3.8.1 on Pentium II system
All I can suggest is that you continue trying different boot parameters, especially the pci, acpi and apic arguments. Many of these older propreitary machines can be tricky. For a list of available boot arguments, see:
http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/text/BootPrompt-HOWTO
Kernel Panic booting Knoppix 3.8.1 on Pentium II system
Maybe try reseating or swapping out the ram chip(s).
Re: Kernel Panic booting Knoppix 3.8.1 on Pentium II system
Quote:
Originally Posted by nad
Maybe try reseating or swapping out the ram chip(s).
Actually, it would be far better to just type in memtest at the Knoppix boot prompt than to do the above. It could be a memory issue, but I don't think that is very likely.
Kernel Panic booting Knoppix 3.8.1 on Pentium II system
I've had systems with hardware conflicts that just couldn't be resolved.
As a matter of fact, I have one server I installed about about a year ago that I had to turn off all USB support in the bios because it conflicted with ACPI functions that I could not turn off. This was a then current motherboard from AOpen. I attribute the problem to a buggy bios and/or firmware from a low end manufacturer and will not use their products any more.
To expect that all hardware will comply 100% with all standards is preposterous. The pressure on a manufacturer to keep up with the Jones' as it were will invariably result in some non-working implementations.
The only thing that open source coders can do is try to comply with known existing standards and implementations and note necessary workarounds and problems. The number of and closed source nature of most BIOSs and firmware will prevent some problems from being solved.
Additionally, older hardware is not targeted for new support precisely because of the need to move forward. Another similar issue: I recently fought to install debian to an old delledge server. The rebranded percraid card installed in the system required the use of an old driver in order to function. Research showed that the original manufacturer was no longer in business and the new owner had dropped support. This is not the end of the story however, as these servers are now being replaced with newer machines in corporate centers and they are being given second lives, the new owner of the technology has recently begun to support the older harware on GNU/Linux platforms, albeit with a properly named driver, megaraid_legacy.
