problem booting livecds of various distrobutions
 

I have what would seem to me an interesting problem. I have been trying unsuccessfully to boot up a live image on one of my computers. I have tried -- Ubuntu, Kubuntu, Xubuntu, Linux Mint, and even Pentoo. The only one that does not completely freeze after the cd spins up and begins to load is Pentoo. But then the problem with pentoo is that after I get to the CLI and type startx, I get a very wonky screen. I thought it might be a refresh issue or something but the mouse pointer is displayed just fine, its the desktop behind it that is totally screwed up. I was about to give up when I found a live cd of OpenSolaris I had recently downloaded and burned and gave that a shot...ran with no problem at all, desktop is just fine and runs very smoothly. I do not get at all what is going on. Every other live cd (except pentoo) freezes after selecting to run with no changes to hard drive. The HD light pegs and the screen freezes. Any idea what is going on? I would love to be able to run a Linux distro I am familiar with, such as ubuntu or even pentoo (the original idea was to run pentoo but the screen issue is preventing that).
I would greatly appreciate any help I could get, thank you in advance.

Aaron

We would need to know what computer your using
its specs?
graphics card or integrated graphics?

also, have you tried the "safe graphics" boot options?

well its a dell, several years old.

Graphics are integrated, running with intel 82845G
the chipset is 845G intel
processor is pent 4 2.66 with 640M memory
Safe graphics made no difference what so ever in results.

thanks

Just for giggles
try the remastersys lxde 2009.07 edition
I noticed it has many many drivers pre-installed for various old lappy
cards
http://www.geekconnection.org/remastersys/rll.html

http://www.geekconnection.org/remastersys/downloads/

I made 503box-Live off that one
http://multidistro.com/downloads/current/current.html

Have you tried a puppy derivative and choose "xvesa" mode if xorg mode doesn't
work
a good little puplet is browserlinux-355
flash included
http://www.browserlinux.com/

Im not using a laptop, its a desktop. The thing is, the latest Opensolaris is running great, with no problems at all. You would think that linux would also run with no problems at all. I would like to be able to run a live image of ubuntu or pentoo on this machine but I am not experienced enough to know where to even begin trouble shooting what is going on. If anyone can help that would be great.

Hi,

It does sound like a driver problem. You should be able to select boot options with most modern GNU/Linux distributions. You say that OpenSolaris works fine. You should be able to get the system information as it has been recognized by OpenSolaris.

You could then use that same information to aid in setting up other distributions. Which versions of the other GNU/Linux distributions have been tried. Note 'versions' not distribution. 'Unbuntu 9.10' shows version 9.10 for the distribution 'Ubuntu'. Complete information is important whenever troubleshooting.

When you boot any of the valid copies of the LiveCD can you do a 'ctrl-atl-Backspace'?

:hattip:

Klaze,

The clue that onebuck gives is the most probable solution, the problem is the driver for a quite old machine. This means:

a) You have to run OpeSolaris and get the system info about your machine; write them down and list the complete name and description of the driver;
b) Get copy of the drivers and compile them into the linux kernel of whatever distro you'd want to use, the source code is always included in the distro CD for easy modification like this; use google.

Opensolaris has good driver support for older machines this explains why it ran over your machine where linux did not.

Hope it helps.

Good luck.

Thanks malemustaq--

I will give that a whirl, it just doesn't seem to be a video driver.

Onebuck --

No I cannot use the ctr-alt-backspace method, it does not even make it in far enough to boot the GUI interface. This is what does not make sense to me. After the very initial boot of the pc, after the post, I get the menu from the CD which asks: test memory, boot from hard drive, install ubuntu, boot live image with no changes to HD -- I choose the boot live image option. Right after this point is where it hangs. It hangs after asking about language and sometimes after the keyboard layout dialog, but it does not make it to a GUI at all. I know that there are more text dialog before the GUI boots, I run the live CD all the time on my main box which is very very similar to the box in question (my main uses the 82865g intel graphics and a celeron 2.6 ). The pc is only about 4-5 years old, I would think that ubuntu would keep the mainstream intel drivers longer than that, but maybe I'm wrong. And on that note, I don't think it is a driver video driver issue because it does not need it, its all text when it freezes. I just read a bit ago about the pentoo livecd having documented problems with intel integrated chipsets and I will try the solution that they give when I get home. I really feel like somehthing else is the culprit on this, but maybe its my noobishness with Linux clouding my judgment.

In terms of what version of Linux its
Kernel 2.6.28
Ubuntu 9.04 2009-05-06

Aaron

Hi,

You could try passing kernel parameters at boot:. Try noapic and noapci parameters first to see if you can get a boot.

:hattip: