Taking too long to BOOT

I recently downloaded (via the P2P site) the Live DVD for Knoppix 6.4.4. When I boot to the DVD on the laptop, it takes up to 45 minutes to boot. I thought more memory might help. No change. I thought burning the ISO to a boot-able USB may help. No Change.

When I boot from the DVD, Knoppix doesn't recognize the Win XP system hard drive (it's a 120GB IDE/PATA HDD). During boot, there is an error message that exceeds 180 seconds and then is followed with an error message about a device, then PCI device followed by several values which are mostly zeros.

Now, when I boot from the USB drive, I get to:

Welcome to Knoppix 6 based on MICROKNOPPIX!
Linux Kernel 2.6.37, 2015 MB RAM.
CPU 0: Intel(R) Pentium(R) M processor 1.73GHz @ 1733MHz, 2048 KB Cache
Searching for Knoppix 6 in: /dev/sdb

At this point there is no further activity for about 20 minutes, then a voice activates and says Initiating Startup Sequence. Then finally the GUI comes up.

I can understand 5 - 10 minutes, but this just seems to be far too long.
Also, booting from the USB, I'm still not seeing the Win XP HDD. There is nothing wrong with Win XP or the System HDD. Windows Boots and operates perfectly.

Any help is appreciated.

High Desert Charlie

Did you burn the disk at low speed? I certainly don't know if that is the or one of the issues in this case, but I've seen more than one user in these forums that has significantly improved their boot time by burning at low speed (I suggest 4X).

I'll give it a try and see what happens. I would have suspected this from the beginning but they say that when you download from the P2P site you shouldn't have those problems. I also verified the data after I burned it with no errors.
But what could it hurt. I'll try burning at the lower speed and see what happens.

High Desert Charlie

As it turns out, since I'm using the Windows 7 - Windows Disc Image Burner, I can only verify the data. I cannot change the burning speed.
Thing that fries my bacon is that once Knoppix is loaded, everything seems to function perfectly. With the single exception that I cannot see the Laptop's Hard Drive.
I used the command to examine the partitions - cat /part/partitions - and the HDD is not there.
Do I have to mount it separately? Is there another way to look for it?

The BitTorrent protocol is error correcting, thus there should be much less of a chance of an error in the download when using the torrents, and they tend to be much faster than the mirrors. The Knoppix mirrors often have problems with the downloads, further making torrents the beter choice. It is still a good idea to do the quick md5 test though before burning, unless you just have way to many blank discs.

However, once you get a good copy of the ISO, it makes no difference how you downloaded it. You need to put as much care in burning an ISO from the torrents as you do a ISO from a mirror that past the md5 test. Slow speed burning is important. I've written in detail about this in many other threads, search the forums if you want more information.

You may have other issues, particularly whatever is causing that 3 minute time-out. But since you seem to have burnt at high speed there is a high likelyhood that that is contributing to at least some of the problems.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by High Desert Charlie

As it turns out, since I'm using the Windows 7 - Windows Disc Image Burner, I can only verify the data. I cannot change the burning speed.
Thing that fries my bacon is that once Knoppix is loaded, everything seems to function perfectly. With the single exception that I cannot see the Laptop's Hard Drive.
I used the command to examine the partitions - cat /part/partitions - and the HDD is not there.
Do I have to mount it separately? Is there another way to look for it?

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Believe me, burning speed is very important. If a Microsoft tool will not let you adjust the burning speed then the fix is obvious, I never use Microsoft tools anyway when there are alternatives. There are other free alternatives that will let you adjust burning speed. You still have not said what speed you are burning at, but I'll bet it is part of the problem based on what you are saying.

Find another tool, even if it is the free trial version of Nero. There is also an unlimited free Nero Lite now, but I have not used it and don't know if it burns ISOs or not (you could help by trying and letting us know).

Also, if you just try burning to a typical rewritable media then you likely will be forced to burn at low speed, and will not keep wasting media while you troubleshoot your problem.

I haven't even fooled with recent Knoppix versions. Older versions automatically mounted hard disk partitions for you but I think the newer versions all force you to manually mount. But I'm not the right person to give advice in that area.

I was in the Army for 21 years, so I know how to follow directions. First I checked the ISO checksum against the MD5 flie and everything was fine.
I then re-burned the ISO image at 4x using Power ISO and re-verified the image after burning.

There is still no change. The DVD took approximately 45 minutes to get to the voice introduction and penguin splash screen followed by the main GUI about a minute later.

This is the message that was on the screen during the majority of the 45 minute waiting period.

Linux Kernel 2.6.37, 2015 MB RAM.
CPU 0: Intel(R) Pentium(R) M processor 1.73GHz @ 1733MHz, 2048 KB Cache
Knoppix 6 found at: /dev/sr0
>>> Starting in Live Mode.
>>> Please do not remove medium until shutdown!
INIT: version 2.88 booting

[mod] [udev] [log] [cg] [hw] [dgus] [ha] [acpi] [drm] [snd]
System Setup......... OK

udevadm settle - timeout of 180 seconds reached,the event queue contains: /sys/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1f.2/host0/target0:0:0/0:0:0:0:/block/sda (1651)

The Disk Utility shows the hard drive under the PATA Host Adapter as "Not Partitioned".
This is a new HDD loaded with a fresh load of Windows XP and is working perfectly.
I suspect this has something to do with the device error I noted above.

Any ideas???

yes, it seems knoppix is having some issues with your hard drive.
what happens when you type "knoppix noudev" ?

It won't detect your hard drive but just to see if that fixes the long booting.

@ High Desert Charlie

Here is a suggestion you might try:

Note exactly which part of sdb is used once your usb finally boots up,
In my case it is sdb1.
Next time you boot from the usb, add the cheat code
knoppix fromhd=/dev/sdb1.

Also, in my case I use an SD Card which occupies the third USB
position; the first two positions must be empty until after the
boot phase, so the the SD Card is seen. When it is recognized,
it gets first place, sdb1.

Hi there HIgh Dessert Charlie,

I agree with dinosoep that in your case your Knoppix CD (and your USB installation) are fine and that your drive is giving Knoppix a hard time.

You say it is new HDD but I guess the laptop isn't. May I ask what happened to the old drive ? The output you gave suggests the laptop is not new (only one CPU, disk is PATA) but not old (2 Gb of RAM). May I ask how old it is ?

There is something confusing me so can you confirm the laptop is running Windows XP but you burnt your CD on some other PC running Windows 7 ? Did the CD work just fine in the PC ?

What I would be concerned about here is that your new laptop HDD may be heading for an infant mortality crisis. I hope you've got all your important stuff well backed up.

On the supposition that the new HDD has replaced a failed old one, may I ask whether you installed the drive yourself or you had a 'professional' do it for you ? It may sound stupid but you wouldn't believe the hours I've lost with PC HDD 'cos I didn't quite get the cable plugged in securely or I'd jumpered it incorrectly.

Since its a PATA drive I think there is no question of it being too new a device for Linux to handle so I wonder if there is perhaps some regression in the Linux kernel. I'd be tempted to go back to the torrent (p2p you called it) and download Knoppix 6.2.1. That has an older kernel and might work better. It it works, I'd sleep easier because that would make it look like a Linux problem, not a HDD problem.

The diagnostic you've got is a complaint about a PCI device, not about the disk. If you've a controller about to die then I hope your laptop is still under warranty. Could you possibly post the output of:

Code:

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lspci

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I've an old laptop with an IDE interface at 00:00:1 and a new laptop with an SATA controller at 00:1f:2 so perhaps your disk is not PATA after all.

Anyway, the first thing to try is dinosoep's suggestion. That should cut your boot time and we can take it from there.

Just an update. After burning the second disk as stated previously, with no significant change in the boot time on the Laptop, I decided I should try the Live CD on my primary Desktop system to see how it worked on that. Knoppix booted to the GUI desktop in about 20 seconds!!! I tried both disks with the same result. I also was able to boot from the USB in about 20 seconds. In all instances on the desktop Knoppix recognized all partitions on my system.

I haven't been able to try the "knoppix noudev" or the "knoppix fromhd=/dev/sdb1" commands on the laptop yet.

The laptop is a Dell XPS M140, one of the Pentium M series. This is one of the better laptops they ever made. It is most definitely a PATA HDD, and yes it is new. I've been working on computers for 29 years, and for the past 7 years 90% has been laptop work. The old hard drive failed for reasons presently unknown, but it's been my experience that hard drives last from 3 - 5 years (with rare exceptions), and IDE drives seem to last longer than SATA drives. Since the hard drive and laptop are working perfectly, I have no reason to believe there is a problem with the hard drive. I have examined the Windows Event System Log, and the system is operating with zero errors.

I assumed that since the disk was not being seen by Knoppix, that it must be seeing it as a PCI device. Technically, a hard drive is a peripheral device as it is not permanently attached to the motherboard and does not operate on the System Bus. Since I'm not intimately familiar with Linux, I thought the error was referring to the hard disk drive. When I get the laptop back up and running in Knoppix, I'll run the "lspci" command you mentioned and report back on the results. I'll also try to boot from sdb1 to see if it will speed up the process.

I appreciate all of your comments and apologize for my ignorance regarding Linux and Knoppix. My programming experience was 28 years ago, and we all know what languages were available in the 80's. I taught BASIC for Central Texas College in 1985, and have some Assembly, Cobol, and Fortran background, but too long ago to remember. By the time they made it to C and C++, I was too busy managing software installations to keep up. These days I'm repairing computers as an added retirement income, but I decided that I wanted to take the dive into Linux, mostly for diagnostic purposes. So that's my story and I'm sticking to it.

Thanks again for all of your help friends. I'll keep this thread up to date as I continue to progress through this new found obsession.

High Desert Charlie