Advice? Knoppix 5.1.1 fails mid-boot from CD

[kwc]

I've downloaded Knoppix 5.1.1 from two different sources and burned CDs. Both begin to boot and then fail in the same way.

I'm on a 2.8 ghz notebook PC on which Windows XP Home is currently installed but somehow screwed up (won't boot) and that's what brought me to Knoppix.

I get a long screen explaining the problem.

Here's how it starts:

Oops: 0002 [#1]
PREEMP SNP

....

And the final thing it says is:

<0> Kernel panic - not syncing:
Attempted to kill init!


-----------------

Any idea what I need to do?

Grateful for the help.

Best,
kenwinston

[kwc]

UPDATE:

I've been able to boot Knoppix from both CDs on another computer. So obviously the problem is with the computer. What other information do you need?

I could try booting again on the bad computer and wait for it to fail and copy more of the information that the page displays -- but it's a LOT of details. Am hoping that what I've provided so far is enough to give a clue.

Thanks,
kwc

[Harry Kuhman]

...I've been able to boot Knoppix from both CDs on another computer. So obviously the problem is with the computer. ....

What speed was the disc burnt at? If the disc was not burnt at a low speed I can't agree with this. Of course, there certainly could be an issue with the computer, or you may just need to find the proper cheat codes, but we frequently see high speed burns that work fine on one computer but don't boot right on another system.

[kwc]

I THINK it was 16x, Harry. Would that constitute high speed?

Thanks,
kwc

[Harry Kuhman]

I THINK it was 16x, Harry. Would that constitute high speed?....

I've learned the hard way that any CD must be burned at a slow speed. I Use 4x in almost all cases. It would really be nice to be able to burn at 56x, 52x, 48x or even 16x, but burns like this induce errors or the disc. In most cases these errors are hidden by the error correcting code included with CD's (over 12% of the CD space is used to encode error correction data for most encoding formats), but that doesn't mean that the burn was good, just that it was correctable. I prefer to depend on the error correction information to fix errors that come from scratches, other degrading of the data, or marginal read issues than to correct errors created at burn time and already using the error correction data. For reasons that I don't fully understand, Knoppix seems to be very sensitive to read errors during the boot process, so it's important to burn the disc slowly to avoid this problem. I can give you links to several past discussions of this in these forums if you want them. see: http://www.knoppix.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=17788 and http://www.knoppix.net/forum/viewtop...?p=78582#78582 And http://www.knoppix.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=17064

So in all honesty while I wouldn't really expect 16x to be a big problem, certainly not as bad as 52x, and I don't know at all that this is even a burning speed problem (try booting with the failsafe cheat code to see if it boots that way), I would still make a 4x copy just to avoid fighting with a problem that might be there but can easily be avoided.

[kwc]

Harry, do you mind being really elementary with me and explaining how to boot with the fail-safe cheat code?

Thanks,
kwc

[kwc]

I may have found it. Looks like I type: boot: failsafe debug -b 3

Not sure when and where I type that, but suppose that will become clear to me as I attempt the reboot in a moment.

kwc

[kwc]

OK. Failsafe failed, too. Here is the "EIP" message:

EIP: [<c01b199b>] sysfs_get_name+0x47/04c SS:ESP 0068:dfe8le28

and that is followed with the "kernel panic - not syncing, attempted to kill init!" message.

Is there some way for me to look up what all that might mean?

Thanks,
kwc

[Harry Kuhman]

I may have found it. Looks like I type: boot: failsafe debug -b 3

When typing in boot parameters, one can stack multiple parameters. I'm not sure where you got the advice to include debug -b 3 or what they do, but just failsafe should be enough. Hit F2 at the boot prompt (or F3, or switch between screens with F2/F3) for more information, or read the cheatcode document that comes down with a BitTorrent download, or see the cheatcodes section of the wiki. And if you didn't use BitTorrent then I sure hope that you tested if you got a good download by the md5 checksum test (although if the disc works in another computer then the md5 sum is very likely good).

[kwc]

I've been burning a 4x CD and on verify got the message that it found an I/O error that it could not fix. So I'll be doing it again. Suspect that MAY be the problem, Harry.

kwc