Live CD - booting stalls after SCSI driver step

Booting, installing, newbie
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Rotter
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Location: Niagara Falls Canada

Live CD - booting stalls after SCSI driver step

#1 Post by Rotter »

I appologize in advance if I am asking a question which is answered elsewhere on the forum.
I am running a Pentium P1-100mHz machine with about 120 meg of RAM.
Currently this machine runs Feather Linux from a hard drive install w/o any major problems. There is no other OS on the machine and Feather did the drive partitioning. I have been trying some different minimalist distro's and would like to try Puppy however when I try to run the Live CD I cannot get into the GUI.
The kernel boots and and all looks good since I see lots of text and no error messages on the screen until....
The last few lines are as follows:


Mounting /proc: done
Remounting root rw: done
Mounting devpts: done
Unmounting /dev/ram0... done
Freeing /dev/ram0 memory... done
Puppy is now running in tmpfs ramdisk, mounted on /
Adding Swap: 588664k swap-space (priority -1)
done
SCSI subsystem driver Revision: 1.00
_


At this point I am left with a flashing cursor and nothing happens.
:?
Any assistance which could be offered would be greatly appreciated.
P.S. Please be patient since I'm still a newbie!
Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction.
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jason.b.c
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#2 Post by jason.b.c »

Rotter wrote:At this point I am left with a flashing cursor and nothing happens.

I think you would type at the flashing cursor :> Start X Or StartX

Something like that, I think thats right??

I guess try it and if it don't work at least you're not out anything.. :roll:
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Flash
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#3 Post by Flash »

Which version of Puppy?
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Sage
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#4 Post by Sage »

I don't think you're at a command prompt, so typing 'xwin' may not work. It is more difficult to start up v1.0.8r1 without adequate memory (128Mb - none shared with video). Is it possible to augment it? Try booting option 4? Or no acpi? dma? If not, try v1.0.7 or install to HD in a modern machine and swap it back to your P100. Incidentally, hope you have your P100 clocked. It should be unlocked. You can always get to 120, but some samples manage 133.
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Rotter
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#5 Post by Rotter »

The Puppy version number is 1.0.8r-1

I am definitely not at a command prompt since I cannot enter anything via the keyboard.

I will try some of the other boot options and possibly an earlier release.

Incidentally the memory check at boot shows approx 131 meg??
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Rotter
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#6 Post by Rotter »

I tried t6he other boot options (#4) with the same result.
Any ideas before I have to go back and start trying earlier releases?
Thanks for your help.
Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction.
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Sage
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#7 Post by Sage »

Looks like you have onboard graphics. Fit any old PCI card and run Puppy v1.0.7. You'll only have a few weeks to wait before Barry releases the all-new Puppy 2 series which should boot a lot better on older kit.
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Rotter
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#8 Post by Rotter »

O.K. I decided to try Sage's fix and I took out the hard drive and installed it on my machine that boots Puppy w/o any problems. When I tried the hard drive install with both 1.0.8r-1 and 1.0.7 I was unable to create the boot floppy (yes I still have a floppy drive!). Puppy told me there was a problem formatting the disk "check to make sure the disk lock tab is open" or some similar statement. :(
I tried 3 different floppies and gave up. I formatted the floppies afterwards with Windoze without problems so it was not the floppy drive or the diskettes. :?
I then tried hard drive install option #2 in version 1.0.8r-1 but it would not accept the partition name which I allocated (/dev/hda1). I tried numerous versions of the characters in this string. :(
The hard drive had been partitioned by Feather and was running feather for the hard drive install.
I am currently trying to decipher what was meant by "Looks like you have onboard graphics. Fit any old PCI card and run Puppy v1.0.7". :?
I guess that short of this my only hope is to wait for the "Puppy 2 series" release. :?:
Thanks for your help so far. :)
Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction.
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Sage
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#9 Post by Sage »

First the FDD issue: Did you mount the drive? You have to use MUT and click MOUNT to access the drive. There is a contoversy raging about whether drives should automount. Some folk want this, but others say it is safer, or observes the Unix tradition, etc, etc to leave it unmounted.
As for your HDD, if you run into these problems, I suggest you clear it completely first in your modern machine using a DOS debug script that I duplicated in this Forum many months ago (Search under my handle). Then boot Puppy under option 4 and write your hda1 and (swap) hda2 partitions using cfdisk. Although it isn't strictly required under Linux, where there have been problems it is better to reboot at this stage. After that, starting in option 4 again, you can do mkswap /dev/hda2 followed by swapon /dev/hda2, then you can proceed with a type2 install. Decline the first offer to install GRUB to the MBR, then either accept the second offer of ditto, or perform this task manually from the main menu. Be sure to do this before you reboot, though!!
Onboard graphics: Is your video connector built into the horizontal backplane of the motherboard? If so, you have the video chip integrated into the motherboard. Older boards shared main memory to run the video (because memory was very expensive ten years ago). This proved a disaster - everything slows down and conflicts. Your BIOS should tell you how much main memory has been allocated to video in that case. You should be able to switch it OFF in BIOS. Then pick any old PCI (the plug-in types) video card out of an old PC in a roadside skip/dumpster or at your local amenity tip and use that - just plug it in - it's that easy.
Don't give up. So far, I've not found any system that won't install Puppy, although much earlier versions proved something of major projects. Notwithstanding, as you say, Barry is making things a whole lot easier for us in Puppy2.
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