can't boot a live cd

sabby · n00b Joined: 21 Nov 2003 Posts: 9

Hello, my system is hanging upon entering init 3 on a Pentium 4 livecd during the installation process. It reports Setting system clock to hardware clock [UTC] and then the entire system stops responding save for the keyboard num / caps lock keys.

This is a brand new computer, and both windows xp and redhat seem to be working fine. Any ideas?

orbital · Posted: Wed Dec 31, 2003 8:40 pm Post subject: may be a cheap cdr?

What gentoo version of the live cd are you using?

I've had issues like this with cheap-o cdr's in the past.

Before you get knee deep in trying to mess
around in the BIOS or something else, try to make a new CD...worth a shot.
_________________
~------~

~ Jon

sabby · n00b Joined: 21 Nov 2003 Posts: 9

I tried another disk at your suggestion (thank you much) but to no avail.

I've also tried:
1. disabling all onboard auto and network devices in BIOS
2. disabling pnp aware OS in BIOS
3. resetting all BIOS values to their normal default settings

I have no idea what is wrong. How exactly does INIT work? What does it do when it starts to boot? Why would the redhat installer work fine and not gentoo - surely they're not that different - I mean, both have to run init and all..?

anyone else?

sabby · n00b Joined: 21 Nov 2003 Posts: 9

oh and I'm using version 1.4 of the pentium 4 variety.

sabby · n00b Joined: 21 Nov 2003 Posts: 9

bumping this - I do NOT want to give up. Please review and advise!

dol-sen · Posted: Thu Jan 01, 2004 6:11 pm Post subject:

I don't know I can solve this for you but I recall there were problems with the 1.4's setting -march=pentium4, but that was later in the install, not booting the live-cd. I thought they were all updated after the problem was solved. What specific live-cd image did you download? Did you check the md5sum of the download to ensure there were no download errors?
_________________
Brian
Porthole, the Portage GUI frontend irc@freenode: #gentoo-guis, #porthole, Blog
layman, gentoolkit, CoreBuilder, esearch...

sabby · n00b Joined: 21 Nov 2003 Posts: 9

I did not check the md5 sum after the download was completed, however, a siimlar problem occurs when I attempt to boot a knoppix CD. Redhat does go through correctly though - this is very odd. Thanks for your responce.

nachiketa · n00b Joined: 19 Dec 2003 Posts: 74 Location: earth

try the option nohotplug
_________________
Stop Thinking
Start Forgetting!

krcroft · n00b Joined: 21 Jan 2004 Posts: 6

I'm also having this problem on a PIII box.

Just tried a couple fresh burns with pentium3-1.4-20030911-cd1.iso ( with matching md5 cb7c412e118da5659d86fa7596af961c )

And the same thing happens. Total stall out at:

* "Setting system clock to hardware clock [UTC]"...
[]

Cursor sits bneneath the message and the system never gets beyond this point (waited 45 minutes before resetting). At this point a ctrl-alt-delete triggers a normal shutdown and reboot.

I tried boot: 'gentoo nohotplug' as one of the forum messages recommended, however to no avail.

This is a bare bones P3 box that's ran mandrake (8.x), redhat (7.2), freeBSD (5.0), netBSD (1.6), and windows XP in its lifetime.

nulltype · n00b Joined: 13 Aug 2003 Posts: 36

My system does this, not livecd. It used to happen only every once in awhile, now it seems to happen everytime I restart my computer, which means it never finishes booting. Also, ctrl+alt+delete does not do anything for me, I have to restart manually.

Using some kind of Athlon, I think it's a T-Bird, on a A7V133.

krcroft · n00b Joined: 21 Jan 2004 Posts: 6

Answering my original question/problem:

I made the following changes in the bios:

- changed the date and time to the actual date and time (was previosly a couple days behind .. this system has been unplugged for a while )

- disabled IRQ assigned to AGP video card
- disabled IRQ assigned to USB port

I did the above simply as 'housecleaning' on the BIOS - I had no idea it would actually solve the problem of 'Setting system clock to hardware clock' hangup.

So the solution, in my case, is ambiguous between one or more of the above three bios changes.

(I'm using the pentium3 build of Gentoo liveCD version 1.4 on a typical Pentium3, 256MB, 200GB IDE, 3com NIC system)

bobzyeruncle · n00b Joined: 27 Sep 2003 Posts: 3

nulltype · n00b Joined: 13 Aug 2003 Posts: 36

I booted mine to windows, which always sets the system clock to windows time, which is apparently different than linux time, since it's always wrong in linux afterward. When I reset the computer back into linux, it worked fine. No idea if that is what fixed it, but it seems that messing with the clock might somehow cause it to start working.