Problem already with Slackware install...

[Abos]

First question it asks... which kernel to boot, hit enter to let it choose... works fine...

Second question: use default US keyboard layout hit enter, otherwise hit 1... no matter what I hit, nothing happens, it just freezes...

WTF, never had a problem with Slack before... any ideas?

 

[chsh1ca]

If you give a description of the system and what is connected where (IE, is the keyboard USB or PS2?) would be handy.

 

[n0cmonkey]

Can you switch to another virtual terminal?

 

[Abos]

Dell 8250
P4 2.4 w/533FSB
512MB RDRAM
120GB ATA100
ATI Radeon 9700 TX
Audigy 2
Logitech USB Mouse
Normal Dell Quietkey Keyboard connected via PS/2

Negative on the terminal switching... it's not a command prompt that comes up... it just gives you the option of hitting 1 or enter... neither work.

 

[drag]

If your keyboard's numlock can't light on and off then the computer is realy locked up.


Try passing these to the kernel at boot time:

linux acpi=off apm=off noapic

And see if that makes a difference.

You should be able to hit enter and pass thru the keyboard stuff with the defaults.

Also be sure to make sure that the ISO you downloaded isn't corrupted. There should be a md5 signiture aviable you can use a program called md5sum to find out if your image you downloaded/burned is 100% correct.

 

[Abos]

Numlock cannot light on and off...

I checked to see if it was corrupted beforehand and nothing came up...

When pass "linux acpi=off apm=off noapic" (or variations of it), I get the message:

VFS: Cannot open root device "" or 03:43
Please append a correct "root=" boot option
Kernel panic: VFS: Unable to mount root fs on 03:43

 

[chsh1ca]

Looks to me like it can't find the install image on the CD. Try using a different kernel to boot from, like maybe one of the scsi machines. Out of curiosity, is this slackware 9.1?

 

[Abos]

Yes... it's 9.1

 

[Abos]

Well, I tried out all the kernels on it, and the very last one (xfs.s) worked. I suppose it is OK to use this, right?

 

[drag]

Oh it did the root thing.

Well....

Tell it what root drive to use then, go something like this:


linux acpi=off apm=off noapic root=/dev/hdc ro


Were /dev/hdc corrisponds to your IDE device that is the cdrom. Like hda=primary master, hdb=primary, slave hdc=secondary master, hdd=secondary slave.

Partitions are idicated by the addition of the number to the end of the harddrive name. Like the 2nd partition on the primary master is /dev/hda2


Also on slackware there is instructions on it a little bit, if you read thru when it boots right up I think it gives you options for more help, and to select which kernel image to boot up with.

What I think is happening is that your machine doesn't like the Linux's Acpi powermanagment stuff. This often happens during hardware detection, I am thinking that the prompt for the keyboard mapping is just how far the installer gets before everything grinds to a halt. Appending acpi=off and apm=off will turn off all power management stuff.

 

[drag]

Originally posted by: Abos
Well, I tried out all the kernels on it, and the very last one (xfs.s) worked. I suppose it is OK to use this, right?

YES.


It may be a good idea that once you get everything installed to go and make yourself a custom kernel from the latest 2.4 series sources. But save that till later.

 

[n0cmonkey]

Originally posted by: Abos
Well, I tried out all the kernels on it, and the very last one (xfs.s) worked. I suppose it is OK to use this, right?

That's the one I used. But I wanted XFS support.

 

[Abos]

Well, I guess I'll use the xfs.s kernel then.

BTW, I tried doing the root= thing and I got another warning about no Init being found...

Thanks for all the quick replies.

 

[drag]

Originally posted by: Abos
Well, I guess I'll use the xfs.s kernel then.

BTW, I tried doing the root= thing and I got another warning about no Init being found...

Grrrgh. Stupid cdrom bootloaders are tricky sometimes.

 

[Abos]

Well, Slackware is now installed. Thanks for all the help.

I'm currently working on getting my internet connection configured.

 

[n0cmonkey]

Originally posted by: Abos
Well, Slackware is now installed. Thanks for all the help.

I'm currently working on getting my internet connection configured.

I remember having issues with that because the kernel module wouldn't load for my NIC. I think I ended up having to compile a new kernel and include it staticly...

 

[Abos]

Crap!

I booted up today and the keyboard isn't working again (though my mouse is). I tried passing the arguments that drag gave me before, but it still doesn't work.

I just did a bunch of searches on this problem, and it seems I'm not the only one to experience it. Unfortunately, I haven't come across a solution yet... I'll keep looking tho.

 

[n0cmonkey]

Good luck. I wonder if I have this problem.....

 

[chsh1ca]

Dumb question, but if it's ONLY your keyboard cutting out, have you tried swapping for another keyboard? It's possible the keyboard is damaged, or the connector is not making a good connection, or potentially the connector on the motherboard is damaged, but I would start with the keyboard first. Rule that out and the next step would be to try using a USB keyboard over a PS2 keyboard.

Assuming it isn't the above, does it work at all with any other distribution/operating system?

EDIT:
One more super huge retarded question, but are all three LEDs blinking? I remember on the QuietKeys we had at my old job if you hit CTRL three times it would lock the keyboard (really annoying if you were doing some quick copy+paste of a few hundred separate lines in windows). The only way to get out of it was to hit either Escape or Enter, but I can't remember which -- ironically it escapes me at the moment.

 

[Abos]

All three lights are not blinking and I've figured out that it's not a hardware problem.

I tried booting with this line: "mount root=/dev/hda3 rw linux acpi=off apm=off noapic", and it works... sometimes. Is there a way to avoid having to tell it all this stuff before it boots? I wanna have it so that it goes straight to the the log on prompt. If it makes any difference, I didn't install the LILO boot loader; I'm using a floppy instead.

On the up side of the problems I've had, I did manage to connect to the internet pretty quickly. I used Lynx for the first time... it was weird...

 

[drag]

To make it so that you don't have to type that crap in everytime you put it into the lilo.conf file. Then re-run lilo.

Check out "append" in the "man lilo.conf" file. The config file is /etc/lilo.conf

If you have any initrd lines, be sure to leave those in there. Also you can multiple entries so that you can simply have a unmodified entry with a different label (say linux.backup?) and use that if your "append" changes made it unbootable.

image=/boot/vmlinuz
root="/dev/hda3"
append="acpi=off apm=off noapic"
label = Linux
read-only

image=/boot/vmlinuz
root="/dev/hda3"
label = Linux.orig
read-only

something like that.

Also for lilo you need to re-run the "lilo" command to make it load up into the bootloader. Be sure to save a backup config so that if you mess up a bunch of lines and accidently saved it then you can go back and simply copy the original version back into place.

Also check out making your own kernel. You can edit out any acpi or power managemernt support. Also this stuff has improved quite a bit since the latest version of slackware was released and may have the problem fixed.

Check out the linux documentation project, and check out this kernel rebuild guide

Basicly you go and make a backup to your /boot/vmlinuz to something like /boot/vmlinuz.original and make a entry for it in /etc/lilo.conf so you always have something you can use. Then you go to ftp.kernel.org and find and download the latest 2.4 series kernel (2.4.27 I think), copy the tarball to your /usr/src directory. Then untar it (tar zxfv kenrel-blahblahblah.tar.gz). Change into the new directory, run some make commands: "make mrproper" to get the sources "installed", "make menuconfig" to get the console menu dialog for configuring the kernel, then "make dep", followed by "make modules", "make modules_install", and finally "make install". Go look at your new kernel image, make sure that /etc/lilo.conf is all correct and has a entry for it, rerun lilo and you should be ready to reboot using it.

Hopefully you did a "install everything" or whatnot when you installed slackware otherwise you may have to install ncurses developement stuff to get the menuconfig working. I've ran into that a couple times on fresh installs, also there is like xconfig for configuring using X windows dialog.