This is a follow-up from the cd-rw/cdrom/xcdroast/CHAOS thread. Please look at page one-three of that thread for the background leading up to this utter disaster story.

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...835#post134835

Here is the description of what happened:

Well- complete and utter disaster. After all seemed well with the cdrom and burner, I shut down the machine as usual, and immediately got a black screen with numerous attempts to shut down text lines, saying something like cdrom something, something, about umount, then repeating another line about shutting down, then trying again and repeating those two lines about 8 times, then something about halting or kill. It went by fairly fast, and was unexpected, so I didn't get time to read much of the info.
Then it shut off. I tried to reboot, and it went into some more text, had a kernel panic of some kind, and froze. I had finally to turn off the power.

Since then, I can't get even to a post, or bios screen. Absolutely nothing comes up- totally black screen. I tried the Mandrake install cd1, which has a rescue mode. It won't boot to that. I tried several Mandrake floppy known good boot disks. The computer won't boot to those. Apparently, whatever shutdown procedure it went through has done something drastic. My main computer is now instantly completely down- I'm writing this on my backup system. I'm at a loss as to what to do. From what happened at shutdown, I feel it has to be related to this cdrom business about umount or the locked cdrom and floppy. This is a major disaster, as I can't even boot to a floppy disk.

Any ideas?
wrc1944
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
I did try a windows 98 boot disk after the linux boot disks and cd install disk failed. That really surprised me. My first thought is to clear the cmos, as I built both of my linux boxes from scratch. I know hardware pretty well, and if not for that shutdown list of lines relating to umount, cdrom, and halt, I'd suspect a videocard or ram problem. The fact that it seems to power on fine (all fans, board, etc.), the cd tray works, but yet I can't even get a beep, or any beep codes which would indicate a ram or other hardware problem makes me think it was something in the linux shutdown.

My question is: Could simply not doing a cdrom umount cause all those error lines and re-attempts at shutdown to appear? (I thought since supermount was working, and in the line I put in fstab, I was OK)

Is there any specific log file to check for clues if I can get to a boot disk? I really don't think its a hardware problem, as I get no error code beeps- something seems to be stopping initialization, like a linux halt command of some kind?

If you got many errors at shutdown that's a problem in itself because you can't act on them. But if you got many errors on boot but didn't act on them but willfully powered off a booting system that's bad. I haven't got any experience with supermount but I don't think an umount command for a cdrw would fsck things up this bad.

Why not take out the HD and add it to your spare box for examining. Hopefully /var/log/message could shed some light on what went wrong.

unSpawn,
There was no way to do anything when I tried to boot after shutting down the first time after making the cdrom fix. The machine froze completely after the kernel panic, and none of the troubleshooting options for frozen machines worked- had no keyboard or mouse function. I had no choice but to power off. On subsequent tries, everything seems to power up as I said, but nothing at all happens on the screen- no beep(s) for error codes- no nothing. I know the monitor is fine- I'm using it now on the other box.

Putting the hard drive in another box as slave to look at the logs is a good idea- I may do that if a cmos clear, and reseating the video card doesn't work. I want to wait until I receive a few more ideas on this forum before acting, as I'm new to linux.
Thanks for the input
wrc1944

Weird, wiggidy weird. I don't know of anything offhand with enabling scsi emulation that can fry a board. I guess there is a chance that the board decided to eat it at the same time as that panic, but that would be too weird.

To look at it from the point of view of just another hard shutdown... have you tried yanking the CMOS battery, let it hang out for a minute-ish so the caps entirely discharge trying to keep the BIOS alive, and then pop the battery back in to see if you can get a post from the utterly cleared BIOS. Normally pulling the reset jumper will do this, but I don't heartily believe in it. I brought an older Socket A Asus back to life with that one little trick after a lighting strike... well, minus a few PCI slots that are horked.

Actually as I think about it more, if the puppy won't post this is much more likely a mobo issue. Try yanking everything short of vid card, RAM, and chip and see if you can get a post, then add a component at a time until you snag a culprit.

Luck,

Finegan

Yeah- my board has been rock solid for months- It's hard to believe this is unrelated to what happened after doing that cdrom-cd-rw-xcdroast fix, and then the first shutdown after that all this occurs. Not that the fix itself was wrong, but I must have self-inflicted this problem with a stupid mistake of some kind.

I really think something in that weird shutdown reset the bios somehow, and setting the defaults with a cmos clear will do something. I'll do a regular cmos clear per the shuttle MOBO manual, and if that doesn't help, I'll do the battery thing.

In the meantime, any more linux advice about what to do if I get it booted again will be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
wrc1944

Update- well, I've tried it all, and nothing worked, so I finally reached the point of believing it to be a power supply problem. There are known problems with my board concerning underpowered 5v and 3.3v lines, but it seems curious that it (a great 300 watter) would work fine for 6 months, and then die like it did. All I did was add the cd burner. And, even going back to the original cdrom only, it still wouldn't post. Anyway, the 420watt PS with 40a and 28a on those lines gets here soon. If that doesn't boot it, I guess the board or cpu is dead. I still can't believe that the weird shutdown trip isn't relevant. I hope the logs tell the story, if I get it booted. If not, I'll put the drive in the other machine and try to access the logs.

Any advice out there?
wrc1944

If the other machine has an ATX PSU, no matter how underpowered, pull that and use it to test your board with just RAM, CPU and vid card... the XP series are pigs, but not nearly as bad as the T-Birds. It would definately kill the PSU over time, but a power up for a post would be fine... I keep a small 125 Watt around just for that purpose (and there's nothing else I can do with it).

Cheers,

Finegan

Good idea, and I was about to do that routine- I have several 145 watters sitting around, too. The other machine I'm on now has a brand new 300 watt AMD/P4 approved, running my old Kt7-RAID and a Duron 900Mhz/384 SDRam/ and only one HD. Works fine. This problem is on the main DDR box, so maybe that DDR and a 300 watt PSU has a lot to do with it.

Since the 420 watt is here tomorrow, I'll put that in the main box, and hope. I know I went cheapo with the PSU's originally (I'm learning not to do that!). If it turns out that that's the problem, and not the weird linux/cdrom/chaos/burner trip, I'll print out all my forum posts relating to this insanity, and eat them, as repentance. And also tell everybody I know not to rely on cheapo PSU's, and then think all the weird problems are major OS problems.

However, I just can't shake the feeling that my PSU failing at that exact point is simply a coincidence, and there is something I'm not realizing about all the previous file manipulations I went through. I fear that something I don't know about will cause exactly the same thing, at the first shutdown. Maybe I'll luck out, and the new PSU will make it all go away.
wrc1944

I can't see how the mounted cd could cause this on shutdown (if thats what you did).I got lousy hardware and basically shutdown with the cdrom mounted by default (got lousy hardware in my head,too).
Never caused any trouble at all.
Maybe that your burner did some funny stuff on shutdown.