Grub Endless Reboot
 

Hi all,

I have this annoying problem with my Dell Vostro 400 desktop computer during start up. When I power on the computer the following occurs:

* Dell logo
* Grub loading stage (count down message) with the option to press Esc to edit options etc.
* Boot from (partition number etc)
Starting up ...
[5.x] Not responding (where x is different for every reboot)
* Computer reboots

It does this repeatedly unless I go to recovery mode at the grub menu and resume normal boot from there or start pressing keys randomly at the "Starting up..." stage and hopefully get a "Loading..." message, which will then resume the boot to the desktop.

I have ubuntu 9.04 - fresh install.

Is this a USB problem? Also there are no problems using the keyboard during bios, grub boot options editing or after login.

Please help :(

can you paste the exect error message from boot.

Hi

Where do I go to find the grub log file and will it mention the "[5.x] Not responding" part even though the computer reboots after displaying it?

Usually the error messages are in /var/log/messages file.

boot your system in a rescue mode and check the dmesg whats happens when your system boots and also check the /etc/inittab file for the directive initdefault it should not be set to 0 or 6. you should set it to 3 or 5.

hope it would help

shahz

Thanks all.

I've uploaded the dmesg log file. This file shows during a normal bootup. I couldn't find a log file that showed a boot where it says a "Not responding" entry.

I did, however, edit my menu.lst and removed the 'quiet' and 'splash' to see what happens during a normal boot.

If I don't press any keys and let the computer boot on it's own, I see a bunch of entries show up on the screen as shown in the dmesg file, but it stops for some time at [0.3] for Booting processor 1 APIC 0x1 ip 0x6000 and then it jumps to [5.]Not responding and then continues up to checking if image is initramfs... before it restarts.

@Shahz: thanks, but I couldn't find a /etc/inittab file

Modify the kernel line in grub to add noapic
If you still have problems add nolapic as well.

Thank you very much :)

Adding both options solved it and I'm able to boot into the desktop, but I see a message briefly before the progress bar is shown:


[ 0.308038] BIOS bug, local APIC #0 not detected!...
[ 0.308077] ... forcing use of dummy APIC emulation.(tell your hw vendor)
[ 0.308114] SMP disabled

Is that because of the noapic and nolapic?

EDIT: Problem with my dual core - only one is being used.

Yeah - unfortunate side effect; to say the least. Try just nolapic.

nolapic works as well and allows the computer to boot on its own.

However, it prevents the computer from using the two processors and enables one of them :(

So far:

noapic - doesn't work
nolapic - works (uses 1 processor)
nolapic noapic - works (uses 1 processor)

It's just weird that to boot into the desktop without the nolapic and/or noapic kernel option, I have to press the Num Lock key a few times when it displays "Starting up..." to prevent the computer from restarting by itself.