View Poll Results: mandrake 9, red hat 8 or other?

**zebthepilot** · 01-20-2003

Hi thanks for looking

I recently tried to install mandrake nine on my system. after rebooting to complete the intstall lilo comes up fine then it says welcome to Mandrake press i for interactive... it gets to the third item "configuring kernel parameters" and says "[ OK ]" but then the system hangs.

so after several rescues and reinstalls I have no progress. so I went back to my original red hat 8 to install it. same EXACT thing. grub comes up then all the same symptoms.

both of these installations have previously worked.

system details:
amd 1.3Ghz
512 mb ram
integrated sound, lan, video
80GB hd 60ish are windows XP and the rest are free for linux.

I have taken off all usb and un required stuff. I was just wanting to try out mandrake 9. but now I can't get either back on the system.

any ideas of how to fix this and or what's causing it?

thanks in advance for any help!

feel free to e-mail me: root_of_all_linux@hangarz.com

**Dolda2000** · 01-20-2003

Are you sure that it is the kernel that hangs? First, check if the caps and scroll lock LEDs on your keyboard are blinking. This indicates a kernel panic. Then, try typing some characters on your keyboard. If they come up on the screen, then the kernel is not hung, but the system is, and that's probably easy to fix.

**zebthepilot** · 01-21-2003

actually yes you are right. I posted this on topic on another forum which I got no replys to. then I remembered this forum and started a post here but rememberd that I copyed the other post on the clipboard. so I just pasted it here.

after posting on that other forum I saw the error in my thinking. the system does say "ok" after it messes with the kernel. so indeed it is something other than that. but I'm not familiar enough with the boot process of linux to know how to fix it. help would be appreciated.

thanks

**Dolda2000** · 01-21-2003

Could you or could you not type characters to the console when it had hung?

**zebthepilot** · 01-21-2003

Yes I can type stuff after it stalls. but it doesn't really seam to do anything.

**Dolda2000** · 01-21-2003

OK, that's great! I should've asked you this the last time, though. What boot loader are you using? GRUB or LILO?

**zebthepilot** · 01-21-2003

well as I think I put in the first post this has happend twice. once with mandrake 9 and now with RH 8. I was using Lilo on mandrake and now grub on rh.

**Dolda2000** · 01-21-2003

Yeah, right! Sorry 'bout that.
OK, then. Perform the following steps:

1. Boot your system.
2. Select the appropriate item in GRUB (do NOT boot it)
3. Edit the boot commands, and select the line that begins with "kernel". Add "init=/bin/sh" to that line.
4. Boot.
5. Execute the following commands on the shell prompt that will show up:

Code:

export PATH=/bin&#58;/sbin
mount -o remount,rw /
cp /etc/rc.d/rc.sysinit >/tmp/rc.sysinit.bkup
&#40;echo '#!/bin/bash'; echo 'trap "echo \$LINENO" DEBUG'; cat /etc/rc.d/rc.sysinit&#41; >/tmp/edit
mv /tmp/edit /etc/rc.d/rc.sysinit
sync
mount -o remount,ro /
reboot -df

Do NOT proceed if an error occurred before the fifth command.
6. Now, boot your system normally and see at which line number it stops and report back here.

**zebthepilot** · 01-22-2003

I love linux.... but after years of being a microsoft tech sometimes linux can drive me nuts.

I'm very confused now. Well first let me say that I haven't gotten to what you said to do... Yet. what I did find: I may or may not have said that I've got the computer dual booting XP and RH8. I've had no problems in the past. but I've been working on linux for several days and it hasn't been working. this computer is always on and the only reason we restart the computer is to switch the OS. my wife was working on it last night after I gave up and she used XP. this morning after you told me what to do I started the computer and it worked fine. it went right into KDE. I shut it down and restarted and it froze at that same point. shutdown booted xp. shutdown and Red hat worked fine. so for some strange reason it'll only boot linux after booting XP.

off the subject -how do I switch boot loaders? I don't really like grub but I guess that's cause I don't know much about it. so back to the problem do you still want me to try that code? this isn't a huge deal anymore cause I never really need to reboot linux and xp will boot fine no matter what, as I said i only shut it down to switch. though I imagine it will get annoying. I don't really understand what would cause this.

thanks
zeb

**Dolda2000** · 01-22-2003

That makes it seem more like a hardware issue. If you want to resolve it, you should do what I posted in my last post.

What would you like to switch to instead of GRUB? LILO?

View Poll Results: mandrake 9, red hat 8 or other?

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Linux kernel hangs.

you are right on that.

yah. sorry meant to put that in.

Both

very, very, very confused.

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