Laptop Problem...Can you help?

**jacksonon** · 01-12-2006, 11:29 AM

Linux newbie here....

I burned Knoppix 3.8 onto a CD, and it runs great on a Gateway PC.
But when I try to run it on my old IBM Thinkpad I get:
<0>Kernel Panic - Not Syncing: Attempted to Kill Init!

I tried a bunch of cheats. And I couldn't get it to work. So I tried this one:
boot: knoppix acpi=off pnpbio=off noapic noapm
And got:
ERROR: CANNOT UNITE READ-ONLY MEDIA AND INITIAL RAMDISK!

Other Live CDs work well on this laptop, but I'd really like to get Knoppix on it.

Any suggestions?
Thanks...

**riles** · 02-03-2006, 05:08 PM

I had the same problem when I tried to boot, I got the error message
ERROR: CANNOT UNITE READ-ONLY MEDIA AND INITIAL RAMDISK!

I'm currently re-downloading the disk immage and am going to try again tonight.

**Harry Kuhman** · 02-03-2006, 05:58 PM

Originally Posted by riles

I'm currently re-downloading the disk immage and am going to try again tonight.

If the md5 sum is good then you have a good image, if it doesn't match them you have a bad image. There should never be a case where you don't know and have to try again. It sounds more likely to me that the disc was burned improperly at high speed. I suggest following all of the advice in the downloading faq.

**riles** · 02-03-2006, 07:46 PM

Yah I didn't bother to check the MD5 the first time. Or follow the download instructions.

Any suggestions if that still doesn't work? The origional poster (jacksonon) seemed to have a good copy, but it wouldn't run on his laptop either.

**OErjan** · 02-04-2006, 02:20 PM

if burning a *.iso that has passed a md5 check at 1-4X (or atleast as slow as your burner/software can do it) wont help...
we take that when it comes, a unlikely senario, a dirty lens and faulty cable are two candidates.

**bitey** · 02-04-2006, 08:42 PM

I have similar problems with my Pentium II Thinkpad. It's the CD-ROM drive; it doesn't like burned disks. It boots with pressed Knoppix CDs but not burned ones. It starts to boot but then encounters "cloop" errors and the like.

You can boot Knoppix (3.7, at least) on another computer with the tohd option to get an image on a USB memory stick:

knoppix tohd=/dev/sda1

Then plug the stick into the Thinkpad and boot from a burned CD with the fromhd cheatcode:

knoppix fromhd=/dev/sda1

edit: I just booted 3.7 on the Thinkpad from a burned CD and the nodma option:

knoppix nodma

**riles** · 02-05-2006, 03:33 AM

I checked the md5 for the origional file I downloaded and it didn't match. The re-download matched and it burned onto the cd fine from my laptop (Acer TravelMate 4000) using NTI CD. Knoppix seems to be running fine. Now to configure it... =)

Thanks guys.