So, I posted earlier today in a different part of this forum about a problem that I experienced while installing Backtrack 4 R2. Just to clarify I am currently running Windows 7 and I do not have any kind of Linux OS on my computer yet. The problem is that when I insert the DVD that has BT 4.ISO on it I can only get so far in the installation process. BT4 starts up fine but then after I select my boot option and it says Starting up... I get this error message


pci_root PNP0A03:00: address space collision: host bridge window[mem 0xafffffff-0xdfffffff] conflicts with PCI Bus 0000:00[mem 0xb0000000-0xffffffff]

After a couple hours of research I learned that this is a recently discovered Bug that only effects laptops made after a certain dates and only effects certain versions of the linux kernel. Apparently BT4 is built on one of these versions and the patch has not been included yet...the problem was just fixed on January 24th of this year.

Here is my issue. If I already had Linux up and running I might be able to figure out how to patch it, but I have no idea how to do this working from Windows 7. I have pasted the link below to the bug report. Any suggestions or information on how I could patch this would be much appreciated.

Here is the Bug link: https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=17011

Thanks.

Dustin.

There is a thing called Cygwin which you could investigate. I've used a pc set up by a unix programmer and he had gimp, and all the usual linux stuff there. It all ran via cygwin.dll in windows\system32. Some options were missing.
http://www.cygwin.com/
Don't ask me about gcc, I haven't gone there.

The bug report shows that booting up with the kernel option "pci=nocrs" will allow it to boot. There may be a way to pass boot options to the kernel allowing booting of the live cd/dvd. However, I have never used backtrack, so I don't no what boot options is gives you.

Backtrack is based on Ubuntu. If it is the same as Ubuntu, pressing F6 at the boot menu will allow you to enter boot commands: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/BootOptions

Your best bet would be to ask at backtrack forums, or find an IRC channel with backtrack people to ask about boot commands.

I posted at backtrack forums also but I haven't had a response yet...actually....I posted yesterday before I posted here and my thread still has not appeared on the website. I will try that though. Thanks alot.

I just started messing around with linux. I have been using Windows for a long time and while I am decent at with windows command I am pretty unfamiliar with Linux commands. Where would I want to enter this line of command. I have written out my boot options below along with the options I have when I select to edit the said boot option in BT4.

These are the options that I have at the bottom of my boot screen when I put the cd in and the boot screen first opens.


Use the up and down keys to select which entry is highlighted. Press enter to boot the selected OS, 'e' to edit the commands before booting, or 'c' for a command-line.


Here are my available boot options

Start backTrack FrameBuffer (1024x768)
Start BackTrack FrameBuffer (800x600)
Start BackTrack Forensics (no swap)
Start BackTrack in Safe Graphical Mode
Start Persistent Live CD
Start BackTrack in Text Mode
Start BackTrack Graphical Mode from RAM
Memory Test
Boot the First Hard Disk

If I select to edit the first option(Start BackTrack FrameBuffer (1024x768) using 'e' this is what I get on the next screen

Kernel /boot/vmlinuz BOOT=casper boot=casper nopersistent rw quiet vga=0x317
initrd /boot/initrd.gz


These are my options at the bottom of this screen

Use the up and down keys to select which entry is highlighted. Press 'b' to boot, 'e' to edit the selected command in the boot sequence, 'c' for a command-line, 'o' to open a new line after('O' for before) the selected line, 'd' to remove the selected line, or escape to go back to the main menu.

If I select to edit the fifth option(Start Persistent Live CD) using 'e' this is what I get on the next screen

Kernel /boot/vmlinuz BOOT=casper boot=casper persistent rw quiet
initrd /boot/initrd.gz


These are my options at the bottom of this screen

Use the up and down keys to select which entry is highlighted. Press 'b' to boot, 'e' to edit the selected command in the boot sequence, 'c' for a command-line, 'o' to open a new line after('O' for before) the selected line, 'd' to remove the selected line, or escape to go back to the main menu.

Could you help me out as far as where to enter the command "pci=nocrs"

You want to add the option at the end of the kernel line:

or

Thanks alot for your help. Just applied the necessary changes and it booted up just fine. Now I will have to find out how to patch the kernel once I get it installed on my hd so I don't have to enter this every time I want to boot bt4.

In my last post I told you that I got BT4 up and running. I finally installed it to my hard drive but when I rebooted the first time I got the same error message that I copied in my first post. My thoughts on this though are now that I have BT4 installed on my hard drive and I also have the livecd(which I am using now) it will be much easier to edit or patch the OS that I have on my hard drive so that it is functional. How would I go about patching the Kernel using the patch that is linked in the bug report that I posted?(using the BT4 live cd)

download your kernel source. That's over 600 megs and really needs a filesystem with permissions e.g. ext or reiser. ntfs or vfat isn't great, and may cause issues.

you will have kernel-source-version.tar.bz2 or .gz. Open that and you will get a directory linux-version/. Place your patch in the same directory as linux-version/. Then cd into linux-version, and run

patch -p1(one, not l) -i ../yourpatch.patch

p1 strips one / from the directory names at the top of the patch, which is usually correct.

Thanks again. I actually got Bt4 to boot from my hard drive...finally. At first the Grub bootloader wouldn't allow me to edit the boot command but after messing around with it a little bit I was able to edit it and include pci=nocrs in order to boot. I will try applying the patch now. Thanks.