beta 5 reboot fail after install
Posts: 44
i have been trying to get vmware player to work in earlier beta's and 343.
so i was very happy to see kernel modules in beta 5.
however, having never had problems installing any mepis or knopix etc. i was flummoxed to install beta 5 (boots fine from cd), install to hd, reboot and BANG!
just after starting lvm and raid
it just hangs with:
[4294682.835000] or 894000, 481000
booted knoppix to look at /var/log/messages - empty
i guess the code above is a kernel code?
this was on a dell 3000 3Ghz celeron, 756 Mb ram, 18Gb root disk
i tried it on an old compaq deskpro PIII and this rebooted fine
re-installed beta 2 on dell - rebooted ok
re-installed beta 5 on dell - several times. all hang with 4294682, following number may change - did once get 4294685.756000
hope someone can help... please!
beta5 on dell
Posts: 44
I went back to burn another cd, k3b said not a valid image in red (sure I would have noticed this at the time!)
so I am re-downloading, burning again today.
will check in vmplayer before trying at home tonite...
beta5 on dell - still broke
Posts: 44
i downloaded a new copy, burned again (slowly)
booted in vmware - ok
installed in vmware - rebooted ok
even installed vmware player - tried to run a vm but it says you can't run vmware inside vmware!
came home, booted on dell -ok
rebooted and failed again after lvm message - just before meauto runs
getting very frustrated now...
is there any way i can log this so i can report a bug?
What Type of Hard Drive?
Posts: 5513
nogg, what type of hard drive do you have on your system that's failing? Is it an IDE, SATA, SCSI? When you configured a vmware virtual system, what type of virtual hard drive did you specify (SCSI or IDE)? Mepis seems to still have problems BOOTING from a SCSI drive, but I don't have any SCSI drives. I'm basing that statement upon what I've read in other parts of this forum.
Jon
beta5 on dell
Posts: 44
it is an ide 120Gb (5Gb partition) same as I have used since mepis 2004, and for knoppix (including accel knoppix)
I know from experience that most ix'es won't use a scsi boot disk (my vmware partition installed to a 3Gb ide - has a 8Gb scsi for saving data)
(i wrote one of the replies about it in the forum)
what i need to know is what the code in square bracket means
OR how to trace the boot sequence to spot where it hangs - I think it is probably meauto, but I can't find a rc script for it...
I'm At A Loss
Posts: 5513
nogg, I'm running out of ideas. I can't help with the debugging of the numbers in brackets. At this point, all I can suggest is sending a reference to this thread and any other details to and see if you get more info from them.
It's frustrating to me too when things work just fine in a virtual computer, but then you put it on "real hardware" and things break 
I hope some other more knowledgable folks chime in on this...
Jon
(SOLVED?) i don't think so - install fails to reboot
Posts: 44
i have been away for a while but noone has replied with anything worthwhile - not even from dev @ mepis...
aanyway - looking closely at cd boot after lvm it seems to do some xorg stuff which set me thinking...
i have been using mepis since 2004 versions and really like it. But at the end of 2004 I bought a new dell.
mepis didn't like the intel graphics chip so i popped in an old matrox 4Mb video card which worked fine.
.... all the way up to beta 2.
so i thought perhaps linux will tolerate the card now and removed the matrox
presto - all my booting problems disappeared
SO either beta 3 onwards (inc rc's) either
a. stop supporting my matrox
b. don't like 2 video cards
not ALL booting problems are solved - sometimes it doesn't start X but another reboot will?
I think too much has been changed and this has made mepis very flaky - i hope it will settle soon as it is still my preferred desktop (WON'T be using it as a serious server at the moment tho)
p.s. thanks for all/none of the helpful replies across several threads here.
is there a reply generator that appends "CHECK MD5sum - PLEASE BURN AGAIN" to every thread that arrives?
most people will have checked these and would like someone to listen to the problem...
Regarding Automatic Reply
Posts: 5513
is there a reply generator that appends "CHECK MD5sum - PLEASE BURN AGAIN" to every thread that arrives?most people will have checked these and would like someone to listen to the problem...
No, this is not an automatic reply. From what I can tell, the only time that I, or others, specifically ask someone to do this is when the symptoms indicate a possible problem with the disk.
I do not make the assumption that "most people will have checked...". I make ths assumption that "this person might not have checked." It's all part of the diagnostics we use to help people. One thing I have found is that most Windows users haven't the foggiest idea what an "md5sum" is. So if they're new to Linux or Mepis, it doesn't hurt to ask them to do something. If they have, great; if they haven't, then they can 
When someone posts a problem and gives us lots of information it is always helpful. But it seems we frequently have to ask (sometimes multiple times) the original poster to give us more information
Jon
still flaky
Posts: 44
well this this the only advice I have been given!
any way it hasn't fixed it
i booted this morning and it stopped right after lvm
with the long number, rebooted again to stop again with a different long number, rebooted again and it went sailing thru!
i would have thought someone having added these numbers (i guess they are 'kernel event manager codes?') would explain what they mean !? - perhaps they are logged somewhere - dump maybe? not much use on their own.
having changed from knopix in 2004, it looks like I might have to go back until mepis is sorted, hopefully.
Can You Verify...
Posts: 5513
...the md5sum of the CD? I know you said that it seemed to run fine on another box, but if you have another system running Linux (or have cygwin on a Windows box) you can test the md5sum of the DISK by inserting the CD, do not mount it, and entering the command
where /dev/hdc is your cdrom drive. It may even be /dev/cdrom, so change the command above as necessary. It will take a while but should return the same sum as whereever you got the image from.
Jon