Booting Live CD's

[baillie]

Hi,

I have been trying out some different Linux Live CD's to see which will work with my laptop, before taking the plunge and installing one. But I have been having some problems:


SuSE 10.1 Live will boot, but will fail claiming it cannot find the DVD it was just booted from, just after selecting either Gnome or KDE.
Ubuntu/Kubuntu will both fail when trying to mount the root file system.
Knoppix 3.7 will boot with no apparent problems
Mandriva One 2006 will also boot with no problems


Can anybody give me any idea why Mandriva/Knoppix will boot but the others fail?

I used Mandriva on my old laptop, but was never happy with it, didn't feel right to me, so was looking for a change.

I may have to give up linux on my laptop. :mad:

Thanks for any help.

Laptop Specs:
Toshiba Equium M50-216

1.73 gigahertz Intel Pentium M
TOSHIBA MK4026GAX 40Gb HDD
TEAC DV-W28E (DVD-RW)
TOSHIBA ECU00 Motherboard
512Mb DDR PC2700 RAM
Mobile Intel(R) 915GM/GMS,910GML Express Chipset Family
Realtek AC97 Audio

Other:
Intel(R) 82801FBM Ultra ATA Storage Controllers
Texas Instruments PCIxx21/x515 Cardbus Controller
Intel(R) 82801FB/FBM USB Universal Host Controller
TOSHIBA Software Modem
1394 Net Adapter #2
Intel(R) PRO/Wireless 2200BG Network Connection
Marvell Yukon 88E8036 PCI-E Fast Ethernet Controller

[Starcub]

I didn't care much for Mandrake either when I tried it several years ago. Knoppix and Gentoo are currently the best distro's in my opinion.

Knoppix sets the standard in hardware detection and is somewhat like a pocket knife for your PC. There is an installation program on the CD called "knoppix-installer" and another one I think called "knx-hdinstall". You can google about them if you want to know which one you should run and how to run it. The distro is debian based, and there are several books on the market that will tell you how to customize, maintain, and use it.

I run Gentoo as my main Linux OS now 'cause I preffer the package management system, and I'm pretty much over the learning curve for it. If you are really looking for a challenge, Gentoo will be worth it I think. However, I would strongly recommend you follow the install documentation which is pretty good.

[abf]

my question is how could ubuntu fail loading the root file system if that squashfs or whatever they use is on the damn cd its booting from...haha... speaking of which ubuntu boots just fine and dandy for me. did you try passing noacpi arguement or just unplug all the crap plugged into your usb ports, sometimes that likes to cause issues....just a suggestion

[seablade]

Its hard to tell without being there, it really depends on the configuration, Linux's strength and eternal weakness at the same time is how configurable it is. As a result it is easy to configure incorrectly or one configuration wont work on all hardware very well.

The main thing with linux to keep in mind, if it works on one distro, it CAN work on any distro with enough time put into it.

Seablade

[baillie]

I run Gentoo as my main Linux OS now 'cause I preffer the package management system, and I'm pretty much over the learning curve for it. If you are really looking for a challenge, Gentoo will be worth it I think. However, I would strongly recommend you follow the install documentation which is pretty good. Will check it out, had a look at it before and some had said it was difficult to set up in comparision to the others, will try the live cd first.

did you try passing noacpi arguement
No, will try it.

or just unplug all the crap plugged into your usb ports, sometimes that likes to cause issues....just a suggestion Nothing plugged in, whenever I play with Live CD's I unplug everything as I know the problems they can cause.

The main thing with linux to keep in mind, if it works on one distro, it CAN work on any distro with enough time put into it. Thats whats really annoying about this, I just need to find out what is causing this and I will be able to boot any of them.

Thanks for the help guys, will try your suggestions and get back to you, hopefully from a Linux OS if I ever get one installed!

Update @ 4:39PM GMT

Had a look at Gentoo, using VMWare, and it looks a bit to advanced for me at the moment, mayber later, would prefer to install one of the noob friendly distros first.

Also tried noacpi with both Ubuntu and SuSE, no difference, still won't fully boot.

This is something the linux community really needs to sort out IMO before it can really start to take a chunk of MS's share, I'm not the only person with this problem, and how many people who are just wanting to see what the fuss is all about will be willing to make repeated downloads, and try other distros.

[abf]

although your problem does come up, its not very frequent. i think even commercial distros like linspire have issues (fails to boot on my desktop regardless of what i do....and ubuntu for that reason...video card related). My laptop tends to boot everything (maybe after i pass noacpi or nousb or some other random command)

to figure out whats causing the issue try booting in verbose mode since i know that ubuntu, suse, and whatnot like to cover up their text with pretty splash screens..... so boot verbose (often called failsafe) mode and check out what the fuss if about.

[baillie]

to figure out whats causing the issue try booting in verbose mode since i know that ubuntu, suse, and whatnot like to cover up their text with pretty splash screens..... so boot verbose (often called failsafe) mode and check out what the fuss if about.
Daft question: how do I do that, in Ubuntu or SuSE?

[abf]

i am gonna go ahead and tell you this straight out, for SuSe...toss the disk out the window...its one of the worst distros i ever came accross. good?

for ubuntu
when it gives you the menu where you can pick "boot or install ubuntu" and "boot in safe graphics" and "test disK" and whatnot, press F6, a command line is gonna show up with the boot paramiters listed, delete (backspace) everything until you get to "rw" ... in other words, remove everything that says 'slash" and "quiet" then press enter....thats gonna let er boot in text mode so you can see whats wrong.

[baillie]

Ok then it's bye bye SuSE, I'll listen to an expert for once in my life!

Next, tried booting in verbose mode, it said something about ide0/ide1 being in use, didn't catch it - moved on too quick for me. But it is similar to this (found on Ubuntu Forums):ide0: I/O resource 0x1F0-0x1F7 not free.
[4294705.597000] ide0: ports already in use, skipping probe
[4294705.597000] ide1: I/O resource 0x170-0x177 not free.
[4294705.597000] ide1: ports already in use, skipping probe

Then I had a repeating message: buffer i/o error on device sr0 logical block 357296

My hunch is that my DVD-RW is involved in this, and is causing the problem, how I haven't a clue, but thats why I'm here!

The disc i am using has been md5 checked after downloading, and burnt using Nero at the slowest speed possible.

Am I 1 or 2 boot options away from success or am I heading into a world of trouble trying to get Linux installed on this machine?

Thanks for all your time and help abf, I'm sure there are better things you could be doing than helping me.

[abf]

hmm, i was gonna say possibly a bad burn, but it seems you took care of that. i know this is sorta stupid but are you using a CD-R or CD-RW, RWs have a huge problem with working as bootdisk, really no idea why, i only know to never burn linux on an RW.

i just did some quick google, and it seems that you're on the right path, something is fishy with your cd drive, but i honestly have no solution to offer you. gotta wait for some1 more knowledable (where are you seablade?) to answer this.

[seablade]

Heh I am still around, unfortunatly this one is gettin above me probably sorry. Heres my stab anyways...

From the looks of it, it is using info provided by the BIOS to load your devices into memory, and those memory addresses are taken. You might try seeing if you can disable anything not needed right off(On the IDE bus) in your BIOS and see if that helps. Also check to make sure your jumper settings are in Master/Slave config and not cable select, youd be amazed how many problems I have in cable select mode sometimes.

Are you using IDE or SATA for your HD and CD?

Seablade

[Starcub]

Assuming you are using the latest 'buntu versions, it looks like the problem is in the later kernels. It would be interesting to see if the latest version of Knoppix would fail to boot as well.

[baillie]

From the looks of it, it is using info provided by the BIOS to load your devices into memory, and those memory addresses are taken. You might try seeing if you can disable anything not needed right off(On the IDE bus) in your BIOS and see if that helps. Also check to make sure your jumper settings are in Master/Slave config and not cable select, youd be amazed how many problems I have in cable select mode sometimes. Will check that out, although I think I have checked that before and it was in Master/Slave.

Are you using IDE or SATA for your HD and CD? The HD is enhanced IDE (ATA-6), and as far as I know the DVD drive is IDE as well, the most I could find out about it: http://www.teac.de/dspd/index.php?cont=products/products.php&prod_id=166&id=4&lang=en

Assuming you are using the latest 'buntu versions, it looks like the problem is in the later kernels. It would be interesting to see if the latest version of Knoppix would fail to boot as well. That thought had crossed my mind as well, but I dismissed it, my thinking was surely operationm would get better with a new kernal not worse. Maybe not will have a look at the latest version of Knoppix (5 I think).

Thanks again.

Update: This looks like the same problem I am having: http://kerneltrap.org/node/3971
I guess I have no option but to wait then, for the fix to appear.

[Jason Kitchens]

Don't know if this will help any... I had the same problem with and old 400 mhz desktop. It would not boot dapper correctly, i think it might have made it one time. I received simillar buffer i/o errors, so I loaded breezy onto it and installed fine. There are how-to's in the unbutu forums to upgrade to dapper, but I havent tried this yet. Not sure if I will because so far this out dated machine is running fine (after installing xfce) and I'm not sure of the benifits of upgrading.

[abf]

we have a little rule in linux: if it ain't broke, dont fix it.

ie....if breezy is working good for you, no need for dapper. i for one had tons and tons of issues with breezy (way more than with Hoary) so i updated to dapper and it works for me.

[seablade]

Update: This looks like the same problem I am having: http://kerneltrap.org/node/3971
I guess I have no option but to wait then, for the fix to appear.

Hmm yes, it does appear there is a workaround for it though if you care to try it, though I cant remember how to speicify module useage from the boot menu to try it on a live CD, maybe someone here can fill in my memory gaps.

On the flip side, if you have an extra IDE channel, you may want to seperate the Master and Slave on your first channel to Master on Channel 0 and Master on Channel 1 instead and see if that effects things.

It does indeed appear to be a memory address conflict, that bug was posted for 2.6.8 I believe so I would be surprised if the fix did not already exist to be honest.

Seablade

[baillie]

Ok small update, I tried the latest version of Knoppix (5.01), and this booted correctly recognised everything but my wireless card I think, I'll play with this for a while, until Ubuntu Edgy is released before I try again I think.

Thanks everybody for your help, great place this!

[abf]

well see....if you got one to work, you can get all of them to work, its just a matter of fiddling with it to get it to do so? whats your wifi card? shouldn't be that ahrd to setup

[aaronjb]

Had a look at Gentoo, using VMWare, and it looks a bit to advanced for me at the moment, mayber later, would prefer to install one of the noob friendly distros first.

Let me interject for a moment on a slight tangent :)

That's a charge I see levelled against Gentoo very often in my travels across teh interwebnet, but y'know, it's not one I agree with..

Sure, Gentoo lacks the 'pointy clicky' configuration interfaces of other distros, but it's really not that hard once you get down to it.. Yes, you need to learn how to configure stuff in config files directly - but the docs for getting started are excellent, and Gentoo gets you the rest of the way.

It's trickier than pointing & clicking, but so worth it. In the end, if you can configure Gentoo, you can configure absolutely any distro you come across - GUI or not - including most commercial *nix systems - with hardly any learning curve.


Anyway.. I started off with Slackware (when it didn't even have a real package manager and no dependency support) back in '96, so maybe I'm biased :)


Anyway - good luck getting everything going on your laptop - Linux on laptops can be a bit of a bear in general, though it's getting a lot better as time progresses. Especially now laptop hardware is converging with it's desktop cousin.

[baillie]

well see....if you got one to work, you can get all of them to work, its just a matter of fiddling with it to get it to do so? whats your wifi card? shouldn't be that ahrd to setup
Yeah I know, thats why its soooo annoying, I really wanted to get Ubuntu working after playing with it for a while using VMWare.

The WiFi cards a Intel 2200BG built in one, I'm fairly sure knoppix picked it up as I did see it recognise an eth0 and eth1. Will boot back into it later on and have a good poke about and see whats going, possibly even find a source for my other problems.

Might try posting on the Ubuntu forums later on with all the info I have found so far thanks to you guys, and see what some more Ubuntu experts make of it all.

[seablade]

Theyll probably say the same we will, install and rebuild the kernel;)

Seablade

[abf]

seablade.....how can he install if he can't boot the install disk!? :confused:

at any rate....ugh.... yeah ipw2200 is a very easy card to get going.

[seablade]

He CAN boot an install disk at least.

The real question then becomes how to install dapper, in which case I might look at downloading one of the flights instead of the actual release. The entire problem seems to center around a single module in his kernel that needs to be patched and isnt in the release kernel. There are a couple of ways of addressing this, one is to install on a different computer if availiable and then transfer. Not reccomended but possible. Another is to avoid that install disk, as I said the earlier flights may be a possibility, otherwise use a different distro for the time being. Another is to roll your own Live CD which unfortuantly I cant help so much with as I have never done it myself;)

Seablade

[seablade]

By the way another method might be to try to remove the problem temporarily, in other words boot from an external CDRom if you can, network boot, etc, and disconnect the second device on that IDE chain and see if that works.

Seablade