I thought I had bad CDs, but now I'm seeing a pattern with some boot problems I'm having with an old HP Omnibook 4150 laptop I'm using...

Background...
366 MHz PII,
6 GB hard disk (3 partitions -- root, swap, home -- ext3)
192 MB memory

I've successfully used Mdk 9.2, Mdk 10.0 community and MEPIS linux (a debian-based linux) on this machine, by way of history.

The problem...

The Mdk 10.1 install seemed to go great, but when I reboot, I get an error when it checks the filesystem -- it asks if I want to run fsck, but then it craps out with signal 11.

I know the CDs are OK because I used the same ones to install 10.1 on another computer -- no problem -- and because I get the same error with another Mandrake-related distro...PCLinuxOS

I get the exact same problem when I tried to install PCLinuxOS -- the live CD worked great, the HD install went smoothly, but when I tried to boot from the HD the error came up!

HELP!
What info can I provide to help troubleshoot this? I didn't write down the exact error message, because I though this would be an easy one to fix, but the solution has proven elusive...

I'll post the exact error message when I'm back by that computer again. Thanks in advance for ANY help!

- drew!

Hello all,

Here's what I ended up doing:

1. On a lark, I decided to use ReiserFS instead of ext3 as the filesystem on my root partition (hda1, the primary partition). I deleted it and reformatted it in the master control center using the partition tool. I left my other ext3 partition as it was (I have data there), and asked the installer to mount hda6 at /home.

This worked fine, except that my user didn't have write access to the home directory (hda6) and so KDE wouldn't start properly except as root.

2. I went back to the drawing board and reformatted hda1 as ext3 using the partition tool in the master control center, but didn't specify anything for the /home device. My theory was that there was something wrong with how the installer formatted the hard disk.

This gave the same result as before, with the boot crapping out at the filesystem check. I ran fsck on it, but it exited immediately with signal 11.

3. One last shot: I reformatted hda1 as ReiserFS and left the /home device unspecified.

Now everything seems to work as expected :-D !


SOOOO... Now I wonder:

A. Why couldn't I have hda6 mounted at /home and have it work logged on as a user? I'm assuming I would need to tweak the permissions, but it seems like this shouldn't be necessary if I'm given the option to put my home directory there.

B. I wonder why I can't have my hda1 as ext3. Seems weird. And what's this with fsck exiting with signall 11?

C. I've never used ReiserFS for anything before. Is there anything I need to watch out for? It this going to be a potential source of problems for a desktop user?


:A!

The sig-11 either means that fsck encountered a partition structure that it had no means of handling or your system has another hardware issue (usually bad ram).

I'd delete ALL partitions and perform a clean install, creating three areas on the HDD...

/ root
swap
/home

and then try this setup.

No there are no problems with Reiser.

I find it more reliable than ext3 and faster too.