Install good but can't boot

rickj · Posted: Tue Feb 11, 2003 10:14 pm Post subject: Install good but can't boot

I finally got an install to work right from stage1, but I can't boot the resulting system.

I saw several posts about trouble with GRUB on my motherboard, so I chose the well-tried LILO. Built a kernel with nothing special about it. The boot starts well, but shortly after checking the filesystems it suddenly goes into a loop printing:

kmod: failed to exec /sbin/modprobe -s -k binfmt-464c errno=8

Since this is a fast loop, the rest of the boot messages rapidly scroll off the screen so I'm not sure exactly what starts the rot.

Attempts to boot from a bootdisk created with dd result in:

Loading.................................................................
Uncompressing Linux...
invalid compressed format (err=2)

-- System halted

I've checked the obvious stuff: fstab is OK, make.conf is pretty simple, and I chose the vanilla-sources for my first kernel under Gentoo. The system runs well from the CDROM, and has done a lot of compiling by now, so the hardware can't be too bad. There seems to be no such file as binfmt-464c anywhere., and I have no idea what it might do for me if I had one.

System is an Athlon 1333 on an Asus A7N266-VM motherboard, nVidia chipset, 512M DDR RAM, 20G hard disc.

herring · Apprentice Joined: 22 Jul 2002 Posts: 187 Location: Norway

never seen it before, but quick search at www.google.com
came up with this one:
http://www.uwsg.iu.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/0102.3/0006.html

rickj · Posted: Tue Feb 11, 2003 11:22 pm Post subject:

Thank you. That tells us what the file is, which is somewhat helpful.

If modprobe merely searches for a file and can't find it the message (on my ancient Red Hat 7.2 system) is:

# /sbin/modprobe binfmt-464c
modprobe: Can't locate module binfmt-464c

which is a little different. It is not clear why we wish to execute an ELF file anyway. But at least we now have some clues. I'll keep trying.

herring · Apprentice Joined: 22 Jul 2002 Posts: 187 Location: Norway

kraylus · l33t Joined: 07 Jun 2002 Posts: 648 Location: ft.worth.tx

last time i got something like that was because i did make zImage instead of bzImage.
_________________
I used gentoo BEFORE it was cool.

G_Man · n00b Joined: 12 Feb 2003 Posts: 2 Location: Brisbane Aust.

Ok, I just finished solving this same problem myself ...

When configuring the kernel you have to make sure that ELF support is compiled in ... NOT as a module. If you recompile with this option, you should be set.

Hope this works for you.

Geoffrey.

rickj · Posted: Wed Feb 12, 2003 6:32 pm Post subject:

G_Man's fix works for me.

How embarrasing - I thought ELF had gone mythical. So I quite deliberately didn't include it in my new kernel, trying to keep size down to allow a floppy reboot.

Thanks to G_Man, and all who contributed to sorting out my problems.