My Ubuntu install thread

[Markbnj]

As I dive into the waters of Ubuntu I call upon the AT brethren to have pity on this n00b. Amen.

I have a box that I just retired from my daughter's room. Celeron, 1 gig ram, onboard ethernet, IDE 100 gig disk. It has an nVidia PCI graphics adaper, in the 52xx series I think. It's really a cheap POS Compaq unimpressario. It has onboard video as well.

Downloaded the 7.04 i386 desktop ISO and confirmed the MD5. Burned it, and booted off of it no problem. From the menu I initially tried a defect check on the CD. The install crashed. I then went ahead and tried an install, and it crashed with the same error.

INT 14: cr2 f8000000 err 00000000 EIP c020c384 CS 00000060 flags 00010007 stack: c00f8050 c03f1296 c0371d8c 00000002 c00f8059 000f8050 00000000 00000000

The interrupt indicates a page fault, right? Thing is, I did just put a new stick of ram in this machine prior to this attempt. It had 1 512m of pc2700 DDR333, and I added another stick of Corsair valueselect, same specs. Windows XP (which the box has on it now) booted fine several times with this added stick.

I'll pull the added stick, and try it again. If that doesn't work I'll pull the PCI gfx card and go onboard. Any other suggestions? Thanks!

Update: pulled the stick of ram, same result. Pulled the PCI video adapter and reconfigured in BIOS to select onboard. Same result. The only other things on this system are the ethernet port, a 1394 port, and a DVD burner. Interestingly when I attempted to check the CD for defects with the onboard video the load progress text at the top was garbled. It displayed correctly with the nVidia PCI card. Same result, though.

Any other ideas?

Update: tried disabling the 1394 interface just for kicks. Same result.

Update: removed splash and quiet from the boot line as suggested by Nothinman. Also tried to boot in safe graphics mode. Same result at same time. I'm wondering if this doesn't have something to do with the Compaq-specific BIOS in this machine. Compaq has a BIOS that presents some proprietary options (like recovery) before booting the OS. This error seems to be happening awful early in the process.

Update: success! acpi=off in the boot options line got me past the int 14 exception. Onward!

Update: Didn't get too far onward . I am getting to the point where it starts to run the setup scripts. So far it has hung in three different places, and gone into an error loop once. It hung once at agpgart: AGP aperature is 128m at 0xe0000000. I tried restarting in safe graphics mode and seemed to get past that point. I had continued with splash and quiet off, so I could see what was happening. The second time through it started dumping huge numbers of progress messages to the screen. I let it run from step #101.xxx or something, through step 550.xxxx and didn't see any change in behavior, or disk access, so I cut it off. Unfortunately all this was flying by too fast to see.

The next time I tried it the system hung in the middle of all this progress text, and I saw a lot of error messages and stack traces. I'm downloading the alternate CD just to get the graphical installer out of the picture, and will try some of the other options xtknight suggested. Is there a way to get the installer to dump a log so I can capture the output?

Update: After reading some of the threads xtknight suggested I rebooted and edited the grub options to add acpi=off, noapic, irqpoll, and noirqdebug to the boot line. The system hung deep in a flood of error messages. The last screen reads (ommitting offsets):

notifier_call_chain
die
do_page_fault
do_page_fault
error_code
dump_trace
show_trace_log_lvl
show_stack_log_lvl
show_registers
notifier_call_chain
die
do_page_fault
do_page_fault
error_code
native_apic_write_atomic
clear_local_apic
disable_local_apic
smp_send_stop
panic
do_exit
printk

The only clue I get from this (aside from the obvious death spiral) is the APIC reference, so apparently those options didn't help in my case. I'm off to do some more research. If anything in this trace gives someone an idea, I'd love to hear it!

Update: I tried a couple of additional combinations of the switches suggested in various threads, and didn't get much in the way of different results. pci=routeirq seemed to get me further along, and I can say that the boot up is failing in the init_bottom scripts at the load hardware devices stage. So there is likely some low level compat issue. I'm going to inventory the hardware on this board and see what I can find out.

Update: here are the machine's specs in case any of this sparks an idea in some Ubuntu guru. Piece of crap, obviously.

Presario S7300CL (DW263A-ABA)

Motherboard: MSI MS-6577 v 3.1
Socket 478
Intel 845GV chipset...
FSB 400/533
Multiplexed AGP (board has no slot)
Integrated GPU (Intel Extreme Graphics)
Intel ICH4...
High Speed USB 2.0
PCI Master 2.2
I/O APIC
AC'97 2.2
3 UHCI host controllers
1 EHCI host controller
Memory: PC2700 DDR333
Slots: 3, 32-bit Master PCI
IDE: PIO, Bus Master, Ultra DMA 100/66
Ethernet: Realtek RTL8101L

Update: The problem was the PCI graphics adapter. I yanked it and enabled onboard graphics in the BIOS, and then with ACPI=OFF in the boot options the LIveCD booted to desktop. The first time it came up the desktop was incorrectly aligned for the screen width. So I restarted in safe graphics mode, and it came up fine in wide screen.

Now to play with the actual install .

Update: got through the install without errors but having a related problem to the int 14 problem from earlier, which I'm sure can be solved the same way if I can figure out where to put acpi=off.

Last update : Fixed the boot problem by hitting escape during the grub countdown, and then editing the kernel options to include acpi=off. Once the system booted I was able to confirm that menu.lst had the right entry, and run update-grub. So now the system boots and it's time to do the fun part.

 

[Nothinman]

In grub remove the "splash quiet" part of the boot command line and you should get more than one you posted. A Linux kernel oops is a lot more than one line.

 

[silverpig]

Doesn't the ubuntu disk come with memtest86?

 

[Markbnj]

Originally posted by: Nothinman
In grub remove the "splash quiet" part of the boot command line and you should get more than one you posted. A Linux kernel oops is a lot more than one line.

Where would I do that, Nothinman? I'm booting off of the install CD I created by burning the ISO for the desktop i386 version of 7.04. Where do I modify the Grub boot command line?

Silverpig: it does come with memtest. I ran it a bit last night and did not see any errors. I will run it again this morning and let it go for awhile.

 

[nweaver]

I would first try to burn it again, to eliminate media/burn errors.

second would be to run memtest for a few hours to see if you find any errors.

when you boot up, and you come to the boot menu, and you have an option to boot livecd, boot memtest, boot from hard disk, etc, there is an option (one of the F keys probably) to modify the line you are booting, remove the line as nothinman suggested.

 

[Markbnj]

Originally posted by: nweaver
I would first try to burn it again, to eliminate media/burn errors.

second would be to run memtest for a few hours to see if you find any errors.

when you boot up, and you come to the boot menu, and you have an option to boot livecd, boot memtest, boot from hard disk, etc, there is an option (one of the F keys probably) to modify the line you are booting, remove the line as nothinman suggested.

Thanks very much! I'll try that right now and post back.

Edit: updated OP. No change. I still get the same int 14 dump immediately after the progress text stops at the top of the menu screen.

 

[silverpig]

Maybe try this?

edit: it seems if you download the "alternate" cd then it should work.

 

[xtknight]

Originally posted by: Markbnj

Originally posted by: Nothinman
In grub remove the "splash quiet" part of the boot command line and you should get more than one you posted. A Linux kernel oops is a lot more than one line.

Where would I do that, Nothinman? I'm booting off of the install CD I created by burning the ISO for the desktop i386 version of 7.04. Where do I modify the Grub boot command line?

When booting up the LiveCD, press F6 on "Start or Install Ubuntu". Then, edit in the options you want.

There are some other options you can try like "noapic", "acpi=off", "nolapic", "irqpoll" "pci=routeirq", "noirqdebug" (you might even have to use all of them at once) but you should probably find out the real problem first by removing the "splash quiet" parameter and seeing the verbose output.

Failing those, you might have some luck here: http://www.google.com/search?h...q+presario&btnG=Search

acpi=off worked for this poor soul with a similar PC and problem: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=427834

This one apparently needs noapic: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=458164

The alternate CD looks interesting too. It's the same Ubuntu, just with a text-mode installer. When you boot up after installation, you will have a GUI.

You said you tried removing "splash quiet" and it didn't work. That's to be expected, but did you get any more output? You can try "acpi=verbose" too.

Failing all of this, updating the BIOS has shown some success. More things you can try (this'll keep you busy): http://www.google.com/search?h...%22&btnG=Google+Search

 

[Markbnj]

Thanks guys. I've been running memtest for an hour or so with no errors, so I am going to try some of the suggestions in those threads, beginning with the ACPI option. Will report back .

You said you tried removing "splash quiet" and it didn't work. That's to be expected, but did you get any more output? You can try "acpi=verbose" too.

No, I didn't get any more output. Behavior was exactly the same, but I will try the verbose option as well.

Update: yeah, baby. acpi=off did it. I'm past that roadblock anyway, thanks for help. OP updated.

 

[Markbnj]

No dice, hanging in different places. See updated OP.

 

[soonerproud]

Try downloading and testing PCLOS or Linux Mint and see if you have the same issue when trying to run the live cd. Sometimes trying a different distro will yield a better result when trying to install Linux.

 

[Markbnj]

Originally posted by: soonerproud
Try downloading and testing PCLOS or Linux Mint and see if you have the same issue when trying to run the live cd. Sometimes trying a different distro will yield a better result when trying to install Linux.

Thanks. I appreciate the advice, but if I can't install Ubuntu on this machine I would like to know that, and know why, rather than just stumbling on to some distro that works. I've been hearing that Ubuntu is the Linux desktop for the masses, so I don't see why it shouldn't install and run on a minimal Intel box like this. There's got to be some low-level crap going on, maybe with the Compaq BIOS.

Updated OP and added some more results.

 

[OoteR02]

I have no real idea whats up with that, but have you checked the ubuntuforums yet? http://ubuntuforums.org/ I'd copy this post and see what some of those guys say.

I have an MP-Bios warning that has to do with APIC that I can boot through so far.. You may find a fix yet!

Does it boot into the test mode?

 

[Markbnj]

Hmm, I have tried "safe graphics mode." Is that what you mean, or is there another boot mode I missed?

Added machine specs to the OP. Heh, this system is a real POS.

 

[Nothinman]

I let it run from step #101.xxx or something, through step 550.xxxx and didn't see any change in behavior, or disk access, so I cut it off. Unfortunately all this was flying by too fast to see.

I believe Ubuntu enables printk timing which is what those numbers are, they don't actually mean anything and are only useful as a reference for how long a certain part of boot took. Most of the messages are probably normal and can be ignored. A real kernel oops looks like this: http://kerneltrap.org/node/3648 . The main part of the article probably won't be helpful but I wanted to make sure you knew what to expect.

So if you boot with no extra options, just remove "splash quiet" from the Grub cli do you still get that same oops?

 

[Markbnj]

Originally posted by: Nothinman

I let it run from step #101.xxx or something, through step 550.xxxx and didn't see any change in behavior, or disk access, so I cut it off. Unfortunately all this was flying by too fast to see.

I believe Ubuntu enables printk timing which is what those numbers are, they don't actually mean anything and are only useful as a reference for how long a certain part of boot took. Most of the messages are probably normal and can be ignored. A real kernel oops looks like this: http://kerneltrap.org/node/3648 . The main part of the article probably won't be helpful but I wanted to make sure you knew what to expect.

So if you boot with no extra options, just remove "splash quiet" from the Grub cli do you still get that same oops?

Yes, that's the one constant. If I don't have acpi=off in the boot options then I get the INT 14 exception right at the beginning. With that option present I get into all this other stuff.

The board is a real red-headed stepchild. No BIOS support from MSI that I can find, but all the pieces seem pretty mainstream. One thing I haven't done yet is go back and yank the PCI gfx card (when it didn't cure the int 14 problem last night I put it back) and boot with the onboard gfx only. I will do that now and see what happens. Other than that card the system is pretty plain jane as far as I can see. Specs are posted in the OP.

Edit: yanked the PCI gfx card and got all the way through to a Live CD desktop. Now on with the install.

 

[silverpig]

Good to hear it's working so far!

It's odd that that graphics card doesn't work. Usually nvidia hardware is well supported.

The good news is a lot of the intel graphics work flawlessly with beryl.

 

[Markbnj]

Originally posted by: silverpig
Good to hear it's working so far!

It's odd that that graphics card doesn't work. Usually nvidia hardware is well supported.

The good news is a lot of the intel graphics work flawlessly with beryl.

That's good to know. I'll have to look and see how much memory the integrated GPU has. Guessing it's 128m.

I got through the install without error, but ran into a problem related to an earlier one. In the LiveCD grub loader I had to edit the options to add acpi=off or I got an INT 14 error. After installation I got the same error when restarting to boot off of hd0 for the first time. I expected this, as I didn't really think it would remember and preserve that acpi=off setting.

So... where do I set that? I hit escape to get into the grub boot menu, then highlighted the "Ubuntu, kernel 2.6.20-15-generic" entry and hit 'e' to edit. The resulting screen shows the following entries..

root (hd0,0)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.20-15-generic root=yadyadayada
initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.20-15-generic
quiet
savedefault

I tried adding acpi=off to the end of the kernel and initrd entries, but had the same error on restart, and the changes weren't saved. I then opened up a new line below savedefault and added it there, with the same result.

Thanks for any help. I think if I can set acpi=off this will boot the os.

 

[Nothinman]

/boot/grub/menu.lst

Look for a line that says "# kopt=" and add it to the end of that and then run 'update-grub'.

 

[xtknight]

Nevermind. Nothinman's will add it for every kernel you install (and preserve the option among current kernels after kernel upgrades) so it's a better choice. Good advice, I forgot about that option.

The GRUB config is stored at /boot/grub/menu.lst (you may as well edit both the normal and recovery mode to use acpi=off).

You can access this by opening the terminal (in the GUI) and typing "gksu gedit /boot/grub/menu.lst". It's self explanatory from there. Save the file and reboot.

gksu is kinda like UAC (privilege elevation), except you enter your own user's password rather than the admin's since the first user is automatically in the "admin" group.
gedit is the GNOME text editor.

 

[Markbnj]

Excellent guys, thanks a lot. I will give that a shot right now.

Edit, so is gksu the same thing as sudo, or just similar?

 

[Nothinman]

gksu is a Gtk+ frontend to /bin/su

 

[Markbnj]

I'm running into a little trouble. I can't boot from hd0 so I need to boot from the LiveCD to effect the changes to menu.lst.

After booting I open a terminal. The sda1 volume which contains the root is mounted as /media/disk, according to the file explorer. If I do a cd /media/disk/boot/grub I am in the proper directory, and am able to edit menu.lst. I added the acpi=off option to #kopt and saved. However, running update-grub produces an error stating that there is no Grub directory. Is this because it expects to find itself on / and not on media/disk? I get the feeling the mount point is the problem.

Thanks for the hand-holding .

Update: NM, I figured out how to change the grub options temporarily during boot, and then once I was in was able to run update-grub with no trouble. So the system is up and running and I can turn this into My Ubuntu Configuration Thread.

Or maybe I will just start a new one.

Thanks for all the help so far.

 

[silverpig]

Good for you that you stuck with it and got it working!

 

[Nothinman]

However, running update-grub produces an error stating that there is no Grub directory. Is this because it expects to find itself on / and not on media/disk? I get the feeling the mount point is the problem.

Yup it's trying to update the grub config for the LiveCD and there probably isn't one since most of them use syslinux.

Another way to work around that would have been to chroot yourself to the other installation's root directory. Running 'chroot /media/disk' would have started a new shell with it's root at /media/disk so every command in there would have been as if it was running from that installation.