Problem installing Slackware64 14.0
 

Problem installing Slackware64 14.0

I tried to install on my computer; everything seemed to go well, and quickly,
until it was time to exit setup and hit ctrl alt del, and change boot media to
hard drive. The usual items that scroll by did not seem to be present, what
you normally see in dmesg, but rather info related to irqs, etc. After about
a minute, there was a clunking sound from my speaker, the screen went
blank, then showed "no input signal", and the computer light was still on.
I reinstalled several times, same result. I had configured lilo, thinking
I would install FreeBSD later for dual boot….the only place I had entered
any info about the video display was there, so I thought I'd see what
happened if I didn't install it. The attached photo shows where it
hung up after rebooting.

I have no idea what to do here, other than try to reinstall 13.1, maybe 13.37.
Any help greatly appreciated.
Best,
Ferrel

i got that L followed by bunch of 9 screen when my active partition doesn't have a bootable file system...are u able to boot into slackware with the CD using "huge.s root=/dev/sdaX rdinit= ro" ? if yes just make sure your lilo.conf is correct and rerun it.

Tried it:
first time, clunking sound, and screen image attached.
second time, no sound, blank screen.

Here is a recording of the clunking sound, at the 20 second mark.

I did the partitioning, install, and system configuration, and had the problem again.
Leaving the system in that state, I took it to the disk partitioning step sgain,
without partitioning again, since it's already configured, and looked at inittab.
There is no runlevel specified. Triwd to edit, can't access vim.

if you have a livecd like knoppix or systemrescuecd, u should be able to modify it.

I have a weird setup, SCSI SATA and PATA (old IDE). I see the 99's when I am trying to boot from the wrong device. Do you have multiple hard disks? Also my solution was to install lilo on a floppy.

One thing I found is that when I boot on a CD-ROM the drive order is one way; and when I boot on the installed Slackware OS the drive order is different. Creates all kinds of problems if one has different drive types.

Here is a link where I posted about my problem: http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...8/#post4809933

I did not listen to the clunking sound, but if the drive is clunking it may be failing.

It would help if you post your drive configuration (fdisk -l | grep dev) and lilo.conf.

-JJ

I have only one drive. The clunking sound seems to occur when everything just "stops". The L 99 problem only occurred when I did not configure lilo during setup.
output of fdisk -l shown, likening when I can determine
how.

After setup, I found this.

those are just warnings which will not affect lilo installation....do you got any error at all when you ran lilo ??

No warnings of any kind during installation and configuration.

can you post your lilo.conf ?

I'll try, but I've looked for it, without success, although I know
it has to bee there, since I getthe lilo prompt.

I'm trying to install slackware64 13.37 to see if it will install properly.
I burned the iso image on my Macbook Pro, but it doesn't appear
to be automatically bootable like the slackware64 14.0 image I
burned on my desktop. It pauses for a few seconds, showing
boot:
since I don't know what to enter to make it boot the 13.37 dvd,
it then tries to run the defective 14.0 install, which leads to
the situation I've previously described.
How can I boot the 13.37 dvd?

To find you lilo.conf you will need to mount your root partition.

I mount mine under /mnt

So execute: mount /dev/sda2 /mnt

From there cat /mnt/etc/lilo.conf

-JJ

Thanks, here is lilo.conf in there segments.

config looks fine, have u tried boot into single user mode ?
for starting the 13.37 dvd, just hit enter at the boot: prompt or put in any options after typing huge.s and hit enter

I've tried using telinit 1, with no luck.

i reread your first post and notice your screen went blank and then show no input signal, i know slackware 13.37 and 14.0 use modesetting which will switch to higher resolution that your videio card can handle at some point during boot, just wondering if it is your monitor doesn't support that resolution, so what you can try during installation when you get to the lilo installation, select expert and at the append kernel parameter, put in video=800x600, that will make it use that resolution instead of switch to the higher resolution

I tried it, same problem.

From http://wiki.linuxquestions.org/wiki/LILO_Error_Codes

Where in the install/boot process would I enter lilo -g?

You can boot into installed system with Slackware install media.
1) boot from the install DVD or CD
2) in syslinux prompt "boot:" answer as shown in example on screen
boot: huge.s root=/dev/sda1 rdinit= ro
where /dev/sda1 is your actual root partition; note space after "rdinit="

Anather way is to boot in Slackware install environment, mount root partition to /mnt and chroot into it:
1) boot from the install DVD or CD
2) press Eneter at syslinux "boot:" prompt and more until root shell prompt "#"
# mount /dev/sda1 /mnt
# for d in dev proc sys do; mount --bind /$d /mnt/$d; done
# chroot /mnt
where /dev/sda1 is your actual root partition.

You have 4 partitions. One is your swap partition, what are the other three? Can you post your /etc/fstab?

-JJ

First method led to noise, blank screen, halt.
Other as show

Here it is

Before attempting this 14.0 install, my computer was a dual boot system
of xp and slackware64 13.1. I decided my 13.1 was getting dated, also
because I was having a problem with my video display when xscreensaver
was running. When running xp, there was no problem with the display at
all, only with 13.1 when xscreensaver was running. After xscreensaver
would start running, at some point the display would freeze, always
showing a series of diagonal lines of characters (blocks, dots, etc),
similar to a photo I posted in this thread earlier. This would sometimes
occur soon after xscreensaver began, or it might be many hours before
it would occur. It would always occur. So I wonder if there is some
connection with that, and with my current problem. This xscreensaver
problem is only a couple of months old; I assumed at the time that I
had botched my system my self in some way, and i made attempts to fix it,
without success. As mentioned earlier, it never occurred while xp was
running, which seemed to indicate the problem was software related,
rather than hardware related. Also, for the first year or so of the 13.1
installation, xscreensaver worked fine, with no freezing up with
those diagonal displays.

I had no problem installing lilo in the dual boot system.

I usually use cfdisk for partitioning, but I tried fdisk once during the 14.0
installation, primarily to try to begin my first sector on 1. The
default sector beginning was 2048; I tried to begin at 1, but
received an error message from fdisk that the value was
"out of range." The error about "cylinder number is too big"
appears to be related to this inaccessible space at the start on my hd.
I decided to not keep xp this time, so I'm wondering if this has
precipitated this problem?

Sorry for the long post, but I thought some background information
might be helpful.

I modified message #23 added mounting /dev, /proc and /sys to new root. This removes LILO warning about /proc/partitions. But this cannot do anything with kernel location after 1023 cylinder, so "-g" doesn't help.
If trouble in kernel location on disk (depends on BIOS, it's settings for this HDD) you can try to make separate small partition for /boot at the beginning of HDD.

No worries on the long post:
I think that is your problem. Why not stick with the default 2048? Check out http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...4/#post4701338

I remember reading somewhere that it was a bad idea to start a partition before 2048. Here is a google search: http://www.google.com/search?num=50&...1c.m0b85b_ezvY

The clunking on your hard disk concerns me. When my drives have clunked, they usually failed. However, I have an old Seagate 500 G that clunked a few years ago, and it is still running. YMMV.

My next step would be to erase the drive using dd, run fdisk and take the recommended starting partition of 2048. I would not enter sector 1 for a starting position. As Bormant suggested make sure you have a /boot partition and it needs to be you first partition.

Here is my suggestion (KISS):
/boot 128M
/ 30G
swap double RAM or 1G minimum
/home rest of drive

Creating a /boot partition is old school. But I still do it. I would not put /usr/local in a separate partition.

-JJ

PS On using dd you just need to erase the MBR, I let it run for a few seconds and ctrl-c out of it.

Success! One time! So far, not reproducible. I made the partition
table as recommended, did the simple auto lilo install, booted,
had an awkward split second when it made noise, and seemed on the
verge of hanging up …. then the usual boot screen scrolled by,
although in much smaller type, and got a login prompt in single
user mode. telinit 4 gave a graphical login screen.
I've tried four times since then, same old problem.

I would take the computer apart and reseat everything. Memory, cables, power connectors, everything. Make sure the power supply is turned off. If in doubt unplug the power cord. Follow ESD protection guidelines.

If that does not help then I would shut it down overnight and then start it up and see if things work.

Do things work at the default run level (init4)?

Try coping files and see if it works, or fails. Keep in mind that there may be data loss if the system crashing while writing to the hard disk.

For testing tar: tar -czv your /usr directory to /root/test.tar.gz.
Command: tar -czvf /root/test.tar.gz /usr/*

I'm not seeing anything wrong from the pictures you've posted. Have you tried to install Slackware 13.1? Have you tried installing another distro? Something like ubuntu, Linuxmint, CentOS, etc.

Have you recently added memory, change a disk, are you using a USB device?

How much RAM do you have?

-JJ

Installed slackware64 13.37, no noise, but screen went blank, and the
machine froze up, about 20 sec after booting from the hard drive.

Installed slackware64 13.1, no clunking noise, everything went fine;
booted into single user mode, rebooted several times to make
sure it's reproducible. Looks like I'm doomed to be an out-of-date
slacker, at least as far as my desktop is concerned.

I wonder how the slackware installer has changed over the two
most recent versions?

One difference I noticed from installing 14.0, 13.37, and 13.1 on my computer;
fdisk behaved differently. The partitioning scheme recommended by jjthomas
was accepted by 14.0 and 13.37 without any problem. I tried to use it
with 13.1, but fdisk complained about partitions not ending on a cylinder.
I tried to begin the /boot sector on 2048, but fdisk would not accept it,
as it was "out of range." On fdisk on 13.1, partition sizes had to be
entered in Mb, while in 13.37 and 14.0, fdisk used sectors. When I set
the /boot partition in fdisk for 13.1, the starting default cylinder was
63, but in the written partition table, the first partition began at 1.

Have you tried Slackware 14, non 64bit?

-JJ

No, I will, if you think it's a good idea.
Working on it.

Installed Slackware32 14.0. No problems during installation. After
booting the hard drive, after 20 sec I got the noise, blank screen,
and hangup as before.

fdisk for 13.1 and before default to use cylinders and 13.37 and after default to sectors, also with 14.0 (maybe 13.37 as well) it looks like it use 2048 sectors at the beginning of the first primary partition for some housekeeping thingy and if you have extended partition, then there is 2048 sectors at the beginning of each logical partition for the same thing, if you want to start at the first cylinder (sector 63), you can run fdisk from your 13.1 installation and then quit and install 14.0 without running fdisk again, i have my first partition start on the 1st cylinder and my slack 14.0 install on sda5 with no problem, my first 3 partitions are used for solaris and 2 versions of windows.

you mentioned your screen went blank after 20 seconds, is it booting at all for those 20 seconds or is it doing nothing? you can also check the log after it failed to boot to give you some idea where it stop during boot by boot from the installation CD and then mount your root partition and check the file /var/log/messages, it seems to me its a video issue, is your video card a nvidia ? check your log to see if you have something like this, it should be where it went blank and switch resolution.

kernel: [ 0.395517] vesafb: mode is 1024x768x8, linelength=1024, pages=20
kernel: [ 0.395523] vesafb: scrolling: redraw
kernel: [ 0.395528] vesafb: Pseudocolor: size=8:8:8:8, shift=0:0:0:0
kernel: [ 0.395656] vesafb: framebuffer at 0xc0000000, mapped to 0xffffc90010680000, using 1536k, total 16384k
kernel: [ 0.420537] Console: switching to colour frame buffer device 128x48
kernel: [ 0.445058] fb0: VESA VGA frame buffer device

http://db.tt/zILP2B8u
http://db.tt/hg0POmpd
One is a video of what happens, usually
A blank screen, but not always. The other
is a photo of the last screen of dmesg.
My card is an Nvidia gefore 6100.

http://db.tt/jxUGgI0Z
Messages and syslog
are empty.
For fun http://db.tt/4XzW2MWs

I see five disk devices, sda, sdb, sdc, sda and sde. What are they?

Before going any further you will need to unplug everything except you monitor, mouse, keyboard, the drive you are installing to and the CD-ROM you are installing from. If you have a hard disk adapter installed, it needs to be removed as well. At this point I would not try to install from a USB stick.

Also make sure you BIOS is set to include just what you need. If you are not using the parallel port, then disable it in BIOS. Same if you have multiple drive interfaces; serial ports, etc. Make sure you AGP/PCI setting matches your video card.

I saw errors from sda2... Why are you using 3 different file systems? I would stick with ext2 for the boot partition and either ext3 or ext4 for the rest of your partitions.

Part of troubleshooting is elimination. First step is take the computer down to its bare necessities. Once you get a stable system one adds things until it breaks, again. Then we know what is causing the problems. :)

-JJ

the pattern on your screen after it went blank looks like the frequency is too high for the monitor, like when resolution too high back in the win98 period, what i'll do is to reinstall slack 14.0 (or 13.37), when installation complete, don't restart yet, if you can edit /mnt/etc/lilo.conf, change the line append=" vt.default_utf8=0" (from your post #16) to append="video=640x480", copy it to /etc and then run lilo, and if there is no fatal error (warning is fine), then restart, you can just install package a to save time and put everything in just one partition as this is just testing

At the lilo boot prompt hit tab and then If it works then add enties to /etc/lilo.conf as suggeseted already

I installed slackware32 14.0; did not reboot immediately, but mounted
/dev/sda1 to /mnt, edited lilo.conf, as

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/30721999/201...2012.34.26.jpg

now rebooted, saw this

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/30721999/vid...2-12-25-24.mp4

rebooted again, at boot prompt, hit tab to get the lilo prompt,
entered linux nomodeset video=640x480, hit enter, saw this; if
you listen carefully, you can hear the noise as slackware 14.0
tries to tear the insides out of my computer :)

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/30721999/vid...2-12-28-23.mp4

looks like changing the resolution fixed the problem, the reason it didn't work the first time is because you didn't run lilo before reboot so that you have to boot using the additional argument everytime, now run lilo and you should be good booting without any argument, didn't really hear anything from within your computer, just your background noise.

I did run lilo the first time, after editing lilo.conf;
I`ll do it again to be sure. Also, the noise is real,
and disturbing.

if the noise only come up after slack is up and running, then it could be related to something new in 14.0 for acpi, don't know much about that

When does the noise occur? I heard something like a squeaky toy being stepped on, breathing and the keyboard clicking. I could not pick out and unusual drive noises.

-JJ

I'll try to make a better video that has more audible sound.

Let us know where on the time line the noise occurs.

-JJ

In this video, the sound occurs at the 16 s mark, either
right before or at

loading fuse module
-
fuse control filesystem already available.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/30721999/vid...4-09-01-39.mp4

Upon further examination, it seems to occur in the 9.52 sequence....acpi etc