Hi, this is my first post here.
I got this error booting some live distributions, like xubuntu, mint and debian or trying to install some others, like slackware.
No problems with puppy and slax, currently up and running.
The mainboard is very old.. this one: Tekram S3PRO-A/Au; bios is the latest available and mainboard is out of support.

I googled a bit, without finding a precise answer: maybe is a bios issue, maybe some faulting hardware, i don't know what to check.
Memory is ok, tested several times with no errors. I have no usb device attached; the remaining hardware is a Realtek 8169 pci ethernet 10/100/1000, a TNT Riva Vanta 16 Mb VGA, an IDE HD 80 GB (relatively old, but it's working, i think) and that's all.

All i can see is a call trace, followed by codes i don't understand and i don't know if they could be useful to investigate the causes.

Hope U can help me.
Sorry for my english, i'm italian, and thank U all.

Welcome to LQ, hope you like it here. Your command of english is definately OK. Anyway. Once you get the oops messages you could run ksymoops on it or else attach 'dmesg' output text file to your post.

I took some shots, don't know how to make it in a different way:

http://i42.tinypic.com/6nuvcx.jpg
http://i42.tinypic.com/332azwz.jpg
http://i44.tinypic.com/21o3kme.jpg
http://i42.tinypic.com/rh4hsk.jpg

sorry for bad quality
Thank You very much for your help.

i'm attaching a syslog file after some crashes in debian lenny.
Hope this helps

Attached Files

syslog.txt (182.8 KB, 6 views)

Is there anything else in system, like sound card?

Thanks for the syslog. If it's not too much trouble, could you post the same for say Slax for comparison or anything that runs something close to Debian's 2.6.26-15?

No PCI sound card, it's integrated in the mainboard.
These are the dmesg and syslog for SLAX.
The syslog is very short, don't know why.

Attached Files

	syslog.slax.txt (5.0 KB, 4 views)
	dmesg.slax.txt (17.8 KB, 3 views)

Can you remove SCSI card from system and try Debian again?

What is the scsi card ? I really do not have one.
In reply to unSpawn, here is the mepis syslog, with no errors.

Attached Files

syslog.mepis.txt (202.2 KB, 4 views)

I saw weird logging in dmesg.slax.txt. Why is following logging in there? Can you explain it?

Loading Adaptec I2O RAID: Version 2.4 Build 5go
Detecting Adaptec I2O RAID controllers...
Adaptec aacraid driver 1.1-5[2456]-ms
aic94xx: Adaptec aic94xx SAS/SATA driver version 1.0.3 loaded
scsi: <fdomain> Detection failed (no card)
sym53c416.c: Version 1.0.0-ac
qlogicfas: no cards were found, please specify I/O address and IRQ using iobase= and irq= options<6>QLogic Fibre Channel HBA Driver: 8.02.01-k7
iscsi: registered transport (qla4xxx)
QLogic iSCSI HBA Driver
Emulex LightPulse Fibre Channel SCSI driver 8.2.7
Copyright(c) 2004-2008 Emulex. All rights reserved.
Failed initialization of WD-7000 SCSI card!

Maybe cause the scsi support is built in the kernel.. i repeat: there is only a pci ethernet card.
Thanks

Sampei, thanks for posting, sorry, just haven't had the time yet to look more closely at your dmesg's.

No problems unSpawn.

Unfortunately the Slax logs don't give anything away. It's surprising what a wide variety of HW gets detected (false or true), and apart from it making the kernel say "kernel: cdrom: hisc dt aackreze!" or "kernel: Cmi nevl5scns<>X3F nsa,itra ora" Mepis (2.6.27-1-mepis-smp SMP PREEMPT) kernel fared way better than Debian (2.6.26-2-686 SMP) according to your logs. There's a few options open I think: 0) don't overclock and reset all BIOS values to defaults, 1) replace any USB devices with DIN-type connector ones, 2) swap out the Realtek for another card, 3) relocate card to another slot, 4) recompile a vanilla kernel.org uniprocessor kernel (2.6.29.3) with only what you need, 4) boot commandline options. OTOH this board is old. I don't know much about this VIA chipset but reports can be found here and elsewhere in combination with a range of kernels. So while GNU/Linux works well with older hardware in the end it might be more cost-effective to just buy a cheap new motherboard?..

I'll check what i can.
Thank you all