hanging on bootup: scanning for harddisk partitions
:( Knoppix 3.7..3.9 hang on my Toshiba Satellite 1800-400 laptop by booting:
My harddisk partioning table looks corrupt. Only winxp en winme have no problems
by knoppix 3.7 with kernel 2.6 (knoppix26) don't hang and with fdisk I can see the harddisk table only mounting is not posible
With knoppix 3.9 failsafe works but with fdisk I can't see /dev/hda only in low resolution
Perhaps there is a solution for this problem
Re: hanging on bootup: scanning for harddisk partitions
Can you boot with boot: knoppix 3? Do you get a shell prompt? If you do, can you post the results of 'cat /proc/partitions'?
Regards,
- Robert
http://www.cwelug.org/
Knoppix 3.2 /proc/partitions
With Knoppix 3.2 there where no problems. The harddisk was fully accessable.
The contents of /proc/partitions was:
Code:
major minor #blocks name
3 0 14749056 hda
3 1 6160896 hda1
3 2 1 hda2
3 5 5630751 hda5
3 6 2955928 hda6
~
~
With later versions of Knoppix I have problems with accessing my harddisk
with 3.8 and 3.9 knoppix hang by booting on: "scanning for Harddisk partitions and creating /etc/fstab..."
Hopefully there is an option by booting
Hans
Re: Knoppix 3.2 /proc/partitions
Quote:
Originally Posted by mln
With
Knoppix 3.2 there where no problems. The harddisk was fully accessable.
The contents of /proc/partitions was:
Code:
major minor #blocks name
3 0 14749056 hda
3 1 6160896 hda1
3 2 1 hda2
3 5 5630751 hda5
3 6 2955928 hda6
If I understand you correctly, the above was created with Knoppix 3.2. However ...
Quote:
Originally Posted by mln
With later versions of Knoppix I have problems with accessing my harddisk
with 3.8 and 3.9 knoppix hang by booting on: "scanning for Harddisk partitions and creating /etc/fstab..."
... you were not even able to get to a shell with Knoppix 3.8 or 3.9. Is that correct?
Quote:
Originally Posted by mln
Hopefully there is an option by booting
Probably. Your partitions do not look out of the ordinary. So, I suspect it may be something other than your harddrive, but that's just a guess.
To troubleshoot this, let's stick with Knoppix 3.8 for now. Try booting with boot: knoppix debug -b 3 Using that boot command will cause Knoppix to pause at various stages in the boot process. Just type 'exit' at each shell prompt to move on to the next stage. You will know that you are at the final stage when typing 'exit' does not do anything. If you get that far, type 'init 5' to go into graphics mode.
How far do you get?
Regards,
- Robert
http://www.cwelug.org/
Re: boot: knoppix debug -b 3
Quote:
Originally Posted by mln
With knoppix 3.8 and 3.9, I must stop at stage 3 else the computer hang on the known failure point.
So with the knoppix boot label you only get to stage 3 ...
Quote:
Originally Posted by mln
When I boot knoppix 3.9 with the command: failsafe
Knoppix startup very quickly in grafical mode
... but with failsafe you get all the way into graphics mode. So one or more of the cheatcodes that's in the failsafe kernel label helps you boot. My guess would be some combination of nodma, noapm, noapci, acpi=off, but that's just a guess.
Try booting with boot: failsafe debug -b 3. As before, just type 'exit' at each shell prompt to move on to the next stage. When you are at the final stage, type
Code:
hdparm -Cbvg /dev/hda
dmesg | tail
Can you post the output of both of those commands?
Regards,
- Robert
http://www.cwelug.org/
Bad news: same problem here, never solved it
I have a very similar laptop to yours and I've never been able to solve the problem. I think 3.4 was the last version of Knoppix that worked correctly for me. I did determine that the "nofstab" cheat code allows me to boot the system, but that's because it doesn't access the hard drive in that case. I've tried every miserable cheat code and kernel parameter you can imagine: nodma, acpi=off, pci=biosirq - nothing works! It's hard drive access that causes the problem somehow. For example, boot into command line only mode, like this:
Now try, for example, to read the partition table on the hard drive with fdisk, but use strace to print out the system calls that fdisk is performing:
Code:
strace fdisk /dev/hda
You'll see that it dies when it attempts the read() system call to actually read the partition table from the disk. It calls read() and it never returns. This leads me to suspect the kernel rather than anything specific to Knoppix.
I had Mandrake 10.1 on that laptop, running Mandrake's 2.6.8 kernel, and it was fine. I recently wiped Mandrake and installed Ubuntu, which worked fine with their stock 2.6.10 kernel and a custom-compiled 2.6.12 kernel. So either it's something specific to 2.6.11 or it's something about the way the kernel has been compiled for Knoppix. At this point I've pretty much given up - I don't know what else I can try to help diagnose the problem. If you ever find a solution I'd love like hell to hear it. At least one other user on this forum has the exact same problem, too - it was he who originally clued me in to using strace to see exactly where fdisk was hanging.
Newbie trying to install knoppix 3.9 on crashed sony vaio
any help out there? It keeps hanging up on scanning for harddisk partitions... I have tried several of the cheats and cannot figure out how to work around it... Anyone else able to beat this....