Dell Inspiron 1520 Laptop locks up after slack64 14.1 install
 

I loaded as described in the title and when booting the process gets to a certain stage and locks up with Caps lock flashing. I tried to reboot using a USB stick and that is no longer recognised by the laptop.

The laptop is now bricked.

The last thing on the screen prior to lock up is:

[ 3.653043] [<ffffffff81b4b9f0>] ? rest_init+0x80/0x80

Check in the BIOS that it still be set up to boot off an USB device first and see if you can boot off your USB installer (as if you'd install again). If yes we can tell you how to chroot into you slackware and reinstall lilo.

Anyhow, as the boot sequence aborts after more that 3.5 seconds, I don't think that the laptop is actually bricked.

I have set it to boot off USB and it doesn't see the stick. I do however have PXE working but I can never get anything to run using PXE.

To narrow down the problem, can you boot your other computer off the same USB stick?

I was not clear earlier. The USB stick contained the recovery data generated when I did the install. I have just reloaded it using the default install kernel and I have my Dell laptop back booting by USB. However I still haven't a clue how to go about fixing lilo, short of doing yet another fresh install.

I assume that you mean you can boot off the USB stick containing the installer (the one you have put on it using the "dd" command, see your other thread).

If that is that case, just do what are told on the first screen to boot your already installed Slackware:After booting, log in your Slackware as root, type "nano /etc/lilo.conf" to check and edit this file as need be, run "lilo -t -v" and il all goes well run "lilo", then remove the USB stick and reboot. That's all there is to it.

I booted up as you suggested only used the huge.s kernel.

The script ran and loaded as before stopping and locking up at the same place.

There is a string of data scrolling, things like "no filesystem could mount root", "kernel panic", "unable to mount root"

If I let the startup script nun the default script I get access to root.

I entered the following:
slack:/# mount /dev/sda1 os
slack:/# block device is write protected , mounting read-only

then I got long hex strings

XFS (sda1): Internal error xfs_sb_read_verify at line730 of file fs/xfs/xfs_mount.c. Caller )xffffffff8134df45
XFS (sda1): corruption detected. Unmount and run xfs_repair
mount: you must specify the file system


I tried to run xfs_repair but did not understand it enough to feel confident.

Reinstall. When asked, choose an ext4 file system, then "check => Slow format that checks for bad blocks".

I did that. When it came to configuring LILO it said there was a problem with the display and LILO.

I can boot boot to a point but get the following error:

"The superblock could not be read" together with lots of stuff about ext2.

I then get a choice of entering contrl-d or give root pwd for normal log in. both options just reboot the system

The USB stick created during the install turns out to be unbootable.

At this point I would suspect hardware error and at least check the memory (using Memtest86+, can be found on the Slackware install DVD) and the harddisk (using the disk manufacturer's diagnosis tool).

Sadly you are correct. I ran the hard drive diagnostics and got error 2000-0146 which is bad news for the drive.

It was a 2nd hand computer and not worth repairing, so I guess it's all over. Thanks for everyone's help.

I would not consider this computer to be too old for repairing (typing this on a laptop with somewhat similar specs that just a few months ago got a new SSD), but of course that is up to you.

Hard drives are easily replaced. If it's the hard drive just get a replacement and all will be well.

As far as partitioning... I suggest either:

/(root) - ext4
Swap - 2x your RAM

Or...

/boot - ext4 - 50mb
/(root) - JFS or BtrFS - remaining space
Swap - 2x your RAM

Why would you recommend swap to be 2x RAM?

Just something I learned a long time ago. Can't recall where, but the guy who told me it said always do double your RAM, unless you have over a certain size and amount, of which I forget just in case, but it had to deal with how much swap could be accessed should the need arise, but over a certain amount was unnecessary as it's just eaten up HDD space.

In other words, that's just an old myth. I don't see any ground to choose JFS or BtrfS over ext4 either, until/unless some special use case of which OP didn't make us aware of IIRC.

FWIW, at least on SSDs JFS is in many use cases significantly faster than ext4.

FWIW the Inspiron 15xx are hot running, you'll go through hdd's faster than average. The HP Evo n610 was another.

Member Response
 

Hi,

I have a Dell 1501 and no such problem with it for temperature damage to 'HDD' while using a spinning disk. The Dell 1501 now has a 'SSD'. I do use Laptop coolers for all my Laptops to aid in stability and prevent any potential heat issues.

@op You can replace the 'hdd' with a like unit or just get a reasonable cost 'SSD'. This will speed things up for the older Dell Laptop.

You can look at post # 368 for some helpful information. Other information within that thread for 'SSD' setup.

Another useful theread; http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...an-ssd-925789/

Hope this helps.