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Old 07-16-2005, 01:26 PM   #1
Xyem
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Kernel Freeze Initializing Network


I have installed Fedora Core 4 on my 500Mhz/256MB/6GB HDD laptop but have run into a rather strange problem during booting the kernel.

About 80% of bootups fail as my laptop hangs at

Quote:
Initializing hardware... storage network
My HDD will usually churn for about a second and then it all goes silent (well, idle type of silent).

This means I am having to turn my laptop on and off about 7 or 8 times just to get it to boot properly (and I'm sure this can't be good for it's wellbeing :P) but when it doesboot, the network works perfectly fine.

The network interface is not onboard but an external Xircom CardBus Ethernet 10/100+Modem 56 (network/modem combo) CardBus card.

Has anyone had any similiar problems or can give me a general direction into identifiying the underlying cause? (as this would obviously aid repairing it)
 
Old 07-16-2005, 08:55 PM   #2
nevarlen
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Can you capture anything from logfiles to see what it was complaining about??
Since you are also concerned about the well-being of your laptop during these hard-reboots, why don't you just disable network devices during the boot-up, and enable them manually once everything comes up as they should..This way you may be able to tell what is causing the trouble...
 
Old 07-17-2005, 02:27 AM   #3
TigerOC
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This will happen if you have configured network addresses for specific cards and then change them. The system cannot find the network and then hangs until it eventually reports an error. This can take a very long time. You need to make sure that the network is configured correctly.
 
Old 07-17-2005, 08:42 AM   #4
Xyem
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Due to nevarlen's suggestion I tried booting with the card out and it boots fine. When I plug the card back in it becomes active but the internet barely works (I can sometimes get as far as google, my start page).

This is leading my to believe the problem is neither Linux or my network cards fault.

Another possibility seems to be my router (D-link DI-604) is the source. Now when I boot with the card in (after the several restarts) it seems the card is requesting it's IP, the router returns the IP (which I have made static), then when the card tries to ping the router, nothing is coming back. 100% Packet loss. Then it requests another IP (and it always seems to get x.x.x.142 but the pinging fails from that IP too.

(Also I should add I am getting strange occurences from the remote control panel for my router since my laptop has been connected to the LAN, I can post a screenshot upon request)

This is strange as my FC4 install on my desktop works flawlessy with my router.

However, I may know what is causing this. Due to the fact I cannot boot to any external media I was forced to install Linux onto the laptop HDD while it was plugged into my desktop PC (using a IDE adapter cable). Not only is my desktop an AMD (32bit) while the laptop is Intel, but I never removed the network card from the desktop during Fedora's installing.

So is it possible that there is a hardware conflict where Fedora is seeking my desktop network card instead of the laptops cardbus network card, causing the kernel to hang/router to ignore it?

(BTW it seems I'm in a little loop of problems. If my kernel boots fine the router ignores my card, otherwise my kernel hangs. However, if I remove the network card from the hardware, then reinstall it. It works fine for about 3 boots then drops back into the kernel hanging.)

Last edited by Xyem; 07-17-2005 at 08:46 AM.
 
Old 08-17-2005, 11:34 PM   #5
jharris1993
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Quote:
Originally posted by Xyem
Due to nevarlen's suggestion I tried booting with the card out and it boots fine. When I plug the card back in it becomes active but the internet barely works (I can sometimes get as far as google, my start page).

This is leading my to believe the problem is neither Linux or my network cards fault.

Another possibility seems to be my router (D-link DI-604) is the source. Now when I boot with the card in (after the several restarts) it seems the card is requesting it's IP, the router returns the IP (which I have made static), then when the card tries to ping the router, nothing is coming back. 100% Packet loss. Then it requests another IP (and it always seems to get x.x.x.142 but the pinging fails from that IP too.

(Also I should add I am getting strange occurences from the remote control panel for my router since my laptop has been connected to the LAN, I can post a screenshot upon request)

This is strange as my FC4 install on my desktop works flawlessy with my router.

However, I may know what is causing this. Due to the fact I cannot boot to any external media I was forced to install Linux onto the laptop HDD while it was plugged into my desktop PC (using a IDE adapter cable). Not only is my desktop an AMD (32bit) while the laptop is Intel, but I never removed the network card from the desktop during Fedora's installing.

So is it possible that there is a hardware conflict where Fedora is seeking my desktop network card instead of the laptops cardbus network card, causing the kernel to hang/router to ignore it?

(BTW it seems I'm in a little loop of problems. If my kernel boots fine the router ignores my card, otherwise my kernel hangs. However, if I remove the network card from the hardware, then reinstall it. It works fine for about 3 boots then drops back into the kernel hanging.)
I have a Dell Latitude CPi Laptop with a Netgear FA511 netcard.

I had Fedora Core 2 installed, and then d/l'd FC4 just to see what's happening.

I get the stall at "initializing hardware... network... (silence)"

It takes several reboots to get it to work. If it works.

I did some searching using Dogpile, and found a number of gripes, including a Bugzilla bug for this very issue. It's supposedly "fixed" in the latest kernel - I installed that - and it's even worse.

As far as I am concerned - this renderes FC-4 essentially unusable. When I had FC-2, it worked like a champ - first time, every time.

Based on what I have read, there has been some serious paradigm shifts between FC-2 and FC-4, resulting in a total re-vamp of the desktop, the RH Update Monitor icon functionality is broken, and a whole laundry list of other issues.

Prediction: FC-4 isn't going to last long. There's just too [darn] much wrong with it right out of the box. I haven't seen this many problems with an O/S since Service Pack 6 for NT!

What puzzles me is that (for all intents and purposes) FC-2 was a Thing Of Beauty.

Sigh.

Jim
 
Old 08-20-2005, 09:40 AM   #6
Xyem
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This is the only major problem I've had with Fedora (though I have some gripes with it too, though perhaps not all Fedora's fault)

I've decided to put Windows 2000 back on my laptop, though I'm having problems with that now! I can't remember how I got the HD to be bootable (go into command prompt). Never mind.
 
Old 08-21-2005, 09:12 PM   #7
jharris1993
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Quote:
Originally posted by Xyem
This is the only major problem I've had with Fedora (though I have some gripes with it too, though perhaps not all Fedora's fault)

I've decided to put Windows 2000 back on my laptop, though I'm having problems with that now! I can't remember how I got the HD to be bootable (go into command prompt). Never mind.
1. If you had grub on it before, you need to "replace" the Master Boot Record with something Windows (M$) can work with. The best way to do this is to boot off of a Win'98 boot disk and run "fdisk /mbr". (Or if you have access to a low-level disk editor, nuke the first couple of hundered sectors prior to re-installing Windows)

What appears to happen here is that the windows installer sees that the MBR is already set with something - so it leaves it alone.

2. I agree. If I could at least get the $%*&@ing thing to boot reliably, I could probably work through the rest of the issues.

What concerns me here is that it appears to me that the boot-stall issue, and the updater issue date back to FC-3.

OK, they release a major dot-release (FC-3) and it has some issues - happens to everybody - but then they release ANOTHER major dot-release WITHOUT resolving a couple of what should be critical bugs? IMHO - I would have expected them to get FC-3 patched and working properly, and only THEN worry about the next dot-release.

Jim
 
Old 08-22-2005, 07:17 AM   #8
Xyem
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Heh, my laptop has no means of external booting so I'm not even getting to the Windows install. I have to boot into a command prompt on the HDD by plugging my laptop into a desktop PC, booting to Windows 98 floppy disk and then "format c: /S".

Problem was my laptop was not booting from the HD, almost as if it couldn't see it, even after I used Windows 2000 recovery console to "FIXMBR/FIXBOOT". However, I had a moment of revelation and I realised what was wrong. Because I had to parition the drive from my desktop using Parition Magic, I forgot to make the drive I wanted to boot from active.

So I did that and it works.

Anyway, that is kind of off topic. But I definately agree with you. A boot-stall issue which has been identified should have been resolved before a new major release. Or fixed with the major release.
 
Old 08-30-2005, 10:39 PM   #9
ashlock
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I have a dell inspiron 8600 with FC4 and mine seems to boot fine on AC, but when booting from battery after running on AC it usually stops at "Initializing hardware storage", and boots the second time (so far).

I thought it was a disk problem, but this is too similar to a problem I had with the boot process freezing on FC2 for many reboot cycles whenever I booted to battery after running on AC. That turned out to be related to driverloader wireless module, but now I am using ndiswrapper.

Last edited by ashlock; 08-30-2005 at 10:41 PM.
 
Old 08-31-2005, 03:51 AM   #10
Xyem
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I'm fairly sure mine was plugged into AC most of the time I was messing with it, though I cannot say for certain. It's a shame that FC4 won't run on my laptop, she just got a little processor upgrade (went from 500Mhz to 700Mhz, though the CPU is 850Mhz my BIOS doesn't support it and just slows it down) which would help with performance. Though I must say it ran very well at 500Mhz...

However, my laptop has had a little incident now and I cannot use it without plugging it into an external monitor. The screen had a huge crack in it so you can't see 2/3 of the screen. Buying a new monitor for it would be far beyond the capabilities of my money supply. *sighs*
 
Old 09-27-2005, 12:50 AM   #11
lucius.wang
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Re: Kernel Freeze Initializing Network

Quote:
Originally posted by Xyem
I have installed Fedora Core 4 on my 500Mhz/256MB/6GB HDD laptop but have run into a rather strange problem during booting the kernel.

About 80% of bootups fail as my laptop hangs at



My HDD will usually churn for about a second and then it all goes silent (well, idle type of silent).

This means I am having to turn my laptop on and off about 7 or 8 times just to get it to boot properly (and I'm sure this can't be good for it's wellbeing :P) but when it doesboot, the network works perfectly fine.

The network interface is not onboard but an external Xircom CardBus Ethernet 10/100+Modem 56 (network/modem combo) CardBus card.

Has anyone had any similiar problems or can give me a general direction into identifiying the underlying cause? (as this would obviously aid repairing it)
yes, i m running into the same trouble u know, and after 'v checked the /etc/rc.d/rc.initial i found that there r some trouble when system attempt to load sound related module or driver.

and the string follows the "initiating hardware ... storage ... network ..." is exactly "audio...."

just unplug ur sound card and try again.

i m using emu10k sound chip. i guess it conflict with the current driver built inside the kernel.
 
Old 09-27-2005, 02:53 AM   #12
Xyem
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Interesting thought and definately a possibility for the source of the problem. But the language used makes it sound like it currently doing network, not that it has finished it (initialising instead of initialised).

How would you go about unplugging the sound card from a laptop? I thought they would be soldered onto the board...
 
Old 09-28-2005, 04:30 AM   #13
lucius.wang
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Talking

Quote:
Originally posted by Xyem
Interesting thought and definately a possibility for the source of the problem. But the language used makes it sound like it currently doing network, not that it has finished it (initialising instead of initialised).

How would you go about unplugging the sound card from a laptop? I thought they would be soldered onto the board...

i 'v got it worked.

yes, once u read the /etc/rc.sysinit

u will find that the initialising script put down the string only after it has successfully initialized a hardware.


# Initialize hardware
if [ -f /proc/sys/kernel/modprobe ]; then
if ! strstr "$cmdline" nomodules && [ -f /proc/modules ] ; then
sysctl -w kernel.modprobe="/sbin/modprobe" >/dev/null 2>&1
sysctl -w kernel.hotplug="/sbin/hotplug" >/dev/null 2>&1
else
# We used to set this to NULL, but that causes 'failed to exec' messages" sysctl -w kernel.modprobe="/bin/true" >/dev/null 2>&1
sysctl -w kernel.hotplug="/bin/true" >/dev/null 2>&1
fi
fi

echo -n $"Initializing hardware... " # ##############################################

ide=""
scsi=""
network=""
audio=""
other=""
eval `kmodule | while read devtype mod ; do
case "$devtype" in
"IDE") ide="$ide $mod"
echo "ide=\"$ide"\";;
"SCSI") scsi="$scsi $mod"
echo "scsi=\"$scsi"\";;
"NETWORK") network="$network $mod"
echo "network=\"$network"\";;
"AUDIO") audio="$audio $mod"

*) other="$other $mod"
echo "other=\"$other"\";;
esac
done`

load_module () {
LC_ALL=C fgrep -xq "$1" /etc/hotplug/blacklist 2>/dev/null || modprobe $1 >/dev/null 2>&1
}

# IDE
for module in $ide ; do
load_module $module
done

# SCSI
for module in `/sbin/modprobe -c | awk '/^alias[[:space:]]+scsi_hostadapter[0-9]*[[:space:]]/ { print $3 }'` $scsi; do
load_module $module
done
load_module floppy

echo -n $" storage" ######################################################

# Network
pushd /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts >/dev/null 2>&1
interfaces=`ls ifcfg* | LC_ALL=C egrep -v '(ifcfg-lo|:|rpmsave|rpmorig|rpmnew)'
| \
LC_ALL=C egrep -v '(~|\.bak)$' | \
LC_ALL=C egrep 'ifcfg-[A-Za-z0-9\._-]+$' | \
sed 's/^ifcfg-//g' |
sed 's/[0-9]/ &/' | LC_ALL=C sort -k 1,1 -k 2n | sed 's/ //'`

for i in $interfaces ; do
eval $(LC_ALL=C fgrep "DEVICE=" ifcfg-$i)
load_module $DEVICE
done
popd >/dev/null 2>&1

for module in $network ; do
load_module $module
done

echo -n $" network" ###########################################################

# Sound
for module in `/sbin/modprobe -c | awk '/^alias[[:space:]]+snd-card-[[:digit:]]+[[:space:]]/ { print $3 }'` $audio; do
load_module $module
done

echo -n $" audio" ##############################################################

# Everything else (duck and cover)
for module in $other ; do
load_module $module
done

echo -n $" done"##############################################################
success
echo

echo "raidautorun /dev/md0" | nash --quiet

# Start the graphical boot, if necessary; /usr may not be mounted yet, so we


 
Old 09-28-2005, 05:34 AM   #14
Xyem
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A very very interesting find. Perhaps it's a conflict between my expansion slots and sound. LIke an IRQ conflict or something (not sure how Linux works when it comes to that) as it always boots fine without the card in. I will take a look once I have had my laptop returned to me.

Last edited by Xyem; 09-28-2005 at 05:35 AM.
 
Old 10-02-2005, 09:09 AM   #15
biblpshnman
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same issue

I am having the same issue with fedora core 4...I have onboard sound, si i guess ill disable the sound card then see if it boots...Its too bad, the soundcard buildt in is decent, and id like to keep it...Are there any sound cards known to work with Fedora Core 4?

Thanks!
 
  


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