Mandriva has endless blinking cursor on boot
 

Hi,

I am new to Linux and recently installed Mandriva 2009 onto an sdhc card for my eee pc 900a.

After booting Mandriva from the sdhc card, a screen where there are green "OK"'s appears. After the line "ClusterIP version 0.8 loaded successfully" is displayed, a long line of code flashes across the screen and then a blank screen with a blinking cursor appears(and Mandriva does not boot).

I, however, can boot to Mandriva's safe mode and then type "exit" which boots Mandriva normally.

Is there a way I can stop the blinking cursor from appearing so I do not have to boot from safe mode every time?

It sounds like it gets stuck waiting for something to happen (and something that is not happening in safe mode - possibly connected to networking, or device drivers).

Can you catch any of the long line that appears immediately before the screen blanks? If not, try to catch what the line immediately before it says, then open one of the system log in less (or any text editor), and search for this line, or a discontinuity in the timestamps. Probably the best log file to start off looking at would be /var/log/messages.

Post that line, and a few around it, and we can try to work it out.

Hmm, my experience is that every one in two releases of Mandriva is not really up to snuff. Maybe you should have installed a distro that is explicitly targeted at notebooks?

I looked in the log file and searched for the lines that were appearing before the screen blanks. I found two different logs for when I did not turn off the computer.

Apr 25 00:43:49 localhost kernel: ClusterIP Version 0.8 loaded successfully
Apr 25 00:43:52 localhost kernel: ip6_tables: (C) 2000-2006 Netfilter Core Team
Apr 25 00:43:52 localhost kernel: netfilter PSD loaded - (c) astaro AG
Apr 25 00:43:52 localhost kernel: IFWLOG: register target
Apr 25 00:43:52 localhost logger: Shorewall started
Apr 25 01:01:01 localhost CROND[4130]: (root) CMD (nice -n 19 run-parts --report /etc/cron.hourly)
Apr 25 01:01:01 localhost msec: set variable Browser to true in /etc/X11/gdm/custom.conf
Apr 25 01:01:02 localhost msec: moved file /etc/issue.net to /etc/issue.net.msec
Apr 25 01:01:02 localhost msec: changed mode of /etc/rc.d/init.d/acpid from 755 to 700
Apr 25 01:01:02 localhost msec: changed mode of /home/johnathan from 755 to 711

Apr 25 11:38:10 localhost kernel: ClusterIP Version 0.8 loaded successfully
Apr 25 11:38:14 localhost kernel: ip6_tables: (C) 2000-2006 Netfilter Core Team
Apr 25 11:38:15 localhost kernel: netfilter PSD loaded - (c) astaro AG
Apr 25 11:38:15 localhost kernel: IFWLOG: register target
Apr 25 11:38:15 localhost logger: Shorewall started
Apr 25 11:38:15 localhost kernel: Driver 'sr' needs updating - please use bus_type methods
Apr 25 11:38:15 localhost kernel: st: Version 20080504, fixed bufsize 32768, s/g segs 256
Apr 25 11:38:15 localhost kernel: Driver 'st' needs updating - please use bus_type methods
Apr 25 11:47:10 localhost pulseaudio[4060]: main.c: setrlimit(RLIMIT_NICE, (31, 31)) failed: Operation not permitted
Apr 25 11:47:10 localhost pulseaudio[4060]: main.c: setrlimit(RLIMIT_RTPRIO, (9, 9)) failed: Operation not permitted

The first log is from when I left the computer on all night at the blank screen. After the "Shorewall started" line, there is a gap in the timestamps. The second log is unusual(there is no time gap after "shorewall started"), I am not sure what I was doing at the time. It might be from when I booted in safe mode.

Other than these two logs, there were a number of logs that had a line with "client has disconnected" after the shorewall started line. This would be where turned of the computer when I saw the blank screen.

Jay, what distros would you suggest?

Hmm, on closer inspection, it turns out a lot of recent distros are struggling on the eeepc 900.
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1129791
It seems to me you will be happier if you use a somewhat older distro. The link above recommends Ubuntu 8.04 or 8.10 but I assume an older version of mandriva would work, too. There is also a version of ubuntu tailored for netbooks (easy peasy) but it appears to be having the same issues at this time; maybe you should look at an older version, back from the days when it was known as Ubuntu eee.

Jay73 may well have a point, but have you tried disabling Shorewall in the startup scripts? There should be links called something like S17shorewall or S34rc.firewall in /etc/rc2.d - /etc/rc5.d. Remove these, and the firewall will not start at startup, and you can see if the system now starts properly. You could then try a different firewall config utility (Firestarter worked fine on my 901 under Debian, if this is available for Mandriva).

Another thought, though. If the system is starting properly when you go to safe mode first, maybe it's a timing issue. If there is something that Shorewall depends on, that is not starting in time and causing it to hang, the problem may be resolved if the firewall starts later in the boot process. The number in the startup link name controls the timing so you could try changing the name of (e.g.) S23shorewall to S99shorewall and see what happens.