Cannot boot from CD - Help needed!

Kronos

I've got the minimal 2005.0 CD, it md5sum'd just fine. I booted, and I get either kernel panic or no video at all. If I do gentoo-nofb I get farther (gentoo with fb kills my video, but it's probably just because the kernel is panicing).

I get to a call trace and then "Code: c1 14 86 53 0c f0 etc etc etc" with a bunch of more hex vals. And then I get:

anello · Posted: Wed Jul 27, 2005 1:14 pm Post subject:

What Hardware are you using?

Kronos · Posted: Wed Jul 27, 2005 1:34 pm Post subject:

Meaning???

No Hyperthreading. It's only a 800mhz p2.
128mb ram.
Intel(R) Desktop Board D815EEA.
i815 chipset

micron box

nothing fancy, no SATA or anything

Douglas Todd · n00b Joined: 25 May 2005 Posts: 5

Does this cdrom boot in any other machine? This would help remote the cd or cdrom as a possible culprit (ie., corrupting the read data)
Just an idea.

anello · Posted: Thu Jul 28, 2005 6:43 am Post subject:

Are you booting of a USB drive? Did you try https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-320660.html already?

There are a couple of threads already out that handle this error message.

Also the output right before "Kernel panic ..." would help.

Yeung · n00b Joined: 31 Jul 2005 Posts: 8

I'm having the exact problem, right after all the CPU Hex code then

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

Not even going to Filesytem, mounting and stuff yet.

It's an old Pentium MMX 166 machine, trying to install it as a Router. The thing is I have no problem at all booting from 2004.0 LiveCD, can I boot from there and install from binary stages in 2005.1 CDs?

Do you think it's my memory problem? Will now perform a memtest. I only have 40Mb of RAM.

sgs · n00b Joined: 06 Nov 2002 Posts: 33

I'm having what looks like exactly the same problem with a Celeron 450 machine.

The problem occured with 2005.1 cd and I moved back to 2005.0 cd with which everything booted fine. I am using minimal cds and nofb option.

I'll post lpsci -vvvv shortly.

sgs · n00b Joined: 06 Nov 2002 Posts: 33

Maybe this is a problem with low memory.....

Things appeared to be going alright with the 2005.0 cd. I had unpacked a stage 3 and snapshot, and had chrooted and started emerging the kernel, during which there was an error related to memory and a complete system freeze (bash prompts and ssh).

I'm currently running memtest to check my memory, but its old and I have no reason to think its defective. More likely to be just too little physical memory..I have only 32Mb...I had set up 512Mb swap (and switched it on!)

If low physical memory is the problem then I have no idea whether its possible to configure things to work or whether this is going to be a loosing battle without more memory. Myself I didn't realise I had that little physical memory and for my purposes I'll have to upgrade anyway.

I suspect the new 2005.1 cd requires more memory even just to boot.

I couldn't immediately spot a section on x86 hardware requirements on the docs section but probably I haven't looked hard enough. Don't think my lspci -vvvv will be of interest now so I won't post it unless someone has a good reason for wanting it.

BTW.....I think its a good idea to follow the docs when installing but I think you should be able to install any released stage starting from any booted sane linux system (any livecd). So long as your stage and snapshot are unpacked and you have chrooted into that environment, updated the environment. So if you had a booting Fedora system you could quietly set up gentoo on some spare hard drive space ready to boot into.

Yeung · n00b Joined: 31 Jul 2005 Posts: 8

I think I will add some more memory later on anyway, i will give it a try again. The memtest86 still running.... more than 12 hours now.. wondering if my hardware really ok.

If not I will try boot from <2005.0, then install the new stages. I hope it's going to work.

Thanks for the reply.

sgs · n00b Joined: 06 Nov 2002 Posts: 33

I only ran that memtest86 last night for the first time.......but I got the impression that it just went round and round forever. Are any errors showing up? You've probably run the test quite a lot by now. Isn't there a thing saying "Pass 21" in the top right?

cyrillic

sgs · n00b Joined: 06 Nov 2002 Posts: 33

I'm a bit annoyed....40Mb should be heaps for a router....way more than needed. My machine is going to have MySQL on it so extra RAM will make a real performance difference. I should be able to get the thing up and running for the time being though.

I used to run X and Doom on lower spec machines.

I'm thinking that the problem might be that livecd does just about everything. The kernel is big because it supports everything / loads lots of modules.....like all that alsa stuff - for which you have no need. The machines probably ready to do more booted on the livecd than it ever will be with everything needed for a router.

Yeung · n00b Joined: 31 Jul 2005 Posts: 8

Yup my bad, memtest running over and over again, none stop.

No error found in memory. I think that 2005.1 LiveCD needs more RAM also.

Good idea, I could try if it can boot from KNOPPIX.

gozmomm · n00b Joined: 15 Aug 2005 Posts: 3

same message with 512 ram

Yeung · n00b Joined: 31 Jul 2005 Posts: 8

I remove all the 4 SDRAM, total of 32MB, then replace one DIMM of 256MB. That:s the MAX the Penitum MMX Mother board could take.

The problem is gone.