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Redhat freezes on startup

Please help,

I am new to Linux but very experienced on hardware/windows.
I have installed Redhat 8.0 (2.4.18-14) on dual boot with Windows XP (Redhat is on a separate hard drive). The installation went ok but I cannot start Readhat as it freezes during the text part of the startup. below are the last four lines of progress before it stops:

"Linux NET4.0 for Linux 2.4"
"Based upon Swansea University Computer Society NET3.039"
"Initializing RT netlink socket"
"apm: BIOS version 1.2 Flags 0x03 (Driver version 1.16)"

My computer is a Dell Dimension XPS B800r with a Pentium III, 256 MB RAM. Linux is on a 10GB hard drive. I am using the GRUB boot loader.

Can any help me get my Redhat up and running?

Thanx

Sounds like you have an APM problem (helpful :-)). To disable APM, use grub to pass apm=n as a kernel parameter.

You can do this either by editing your /etc/grub.conf file, or by operating the grub console manually at boot time (press esc at the menu). For example,

Code:

root (hd1,0)

kernel /vmlinuz-2.4.18-4 apm=n

boot

Alternatively, I could be barking up the tree, and the thing really causing the program could be whatever comes after the APM initialization, and it isn't outputting anything before locking hard. To find what that is, we'll need another RH8 user to look at their dmesg output and tell us what comes after the apm line:

Code:

dmesg | grep -A 5 apm

The next lines are:

Code:

Starting kswapd

VFS: Diskquotas version dquot_6.5.0 initialized

pty: 2048 Unix98 ptys configured

It does sound like an apm problem though - check your BIOS settings.

Thanks for the quick replys guys. I have tried the suggested kernel parameter but no joy. I simply refuses to go on locking the machine hard (no keyboard response). Maybe it just won't run on Dell BIOS A08? I also looked in the BIOS but there's not much in the way of APM control options. I tried the different settings and also the PnP BIOS options with no success. Any more ideas?

John

Problem solved! Thankyou very much to Faecal and david_ross, you were both on the right track. The offending line was in fact the one after the apm: line, it was trying to start some keyboard daemon. I have a USB keyboard which worked ok during the installation phase but would not initialise during the startup.

Before solving the problem though I went thrugh a bad time when I decided it was a good idea to flash the BIOS back to the first release, after doing that, the machine was rendered useless with a CMOS Checksum bad error not even being able to boot a floppy disk. Dell told me it had run out of warranty and were not helpful (wanted to sell me a complete motherboard!). I replaced the CMOS battery with no success. Eventually I found a loophole in the Setup program which allowed me to get to the floppy boot stage at which time I flashed the BIOS back to the latest version. It was then that I got inspired thanks to the comments by Faecal who said it could be the line after and by david_ross who showed that the next line was to do with the keyboard. Thanx guys!!! Now I can enjoy redhat.

This is my first time on the Linus Questions and it really paid off immediately.

Cheers,
John