Hi there.

I have just installed Debian Woody, and I have tried to install the 2.4.18 kernel package. When I tried to boot this kernel it says:

"Loading linux.....
Uncompressing linux................."

And then it stops. The cursor stays blinking on the next line. The laptop goes completly unresponsive and I have to reboot with the power button.

I then tired to install the 2.4.18 kernel source and built it. When I install the built kernel I get the same problem as above. It wont boot. I have tried rebuilding the kernel multiple times, and it always stops in the same way.

The laptop is a Pro-Star 5600DS Pentium 4 2.4GHz. It has 1gb of ram, and an ATI Radeon Mobility 128mb graphics card.

Has anyone seen a problem like this before?
Is there some way that I can view a log file of what is going wrong to identify what I am doing wrong?

Any help would be much appreciated, and if there is any information that I can supply that would help anyone to identify the problem, please just post below.

Kindest regards,

Marc O'Morain

But Woody installs with 2.4.18??? Unless you went with a 2.2.x kernel...

I have the 2.2 kernel installed that comes with Woody.
I tried to reintsall Woody with the parameter bf24, and It would not boot.

It seems that my laptop just does not like the 2.4.18 kernel. :(

Seems odd that a P4 laptop won't boot with the almost obsoleted 2.4 kernel... my old P3 heap has no problems with it. Did you create an emergency boot disk? Have you tried booting from it yet?

I can boot from a 2.2 boot disk, and I have since booted from a 2.2 kernel that I have compiled myself.

What about a 2.4.18-bf24 boot disk, as prepared during initial setup?

When I try to run the installer with bf24, it kernel decompresses, it then says ok loading linux, then it freezes as per my original problem.

did you look for the laptop on howtos about installing on laptops?

I might be that the laptop isn't "linux compilant"

Have you tried using the "vanilla" install flavour? You may need to add your hardware support module by module.


Alternatively you could try installing a test of the 2.6.x series, it looks like it's nearly ready.