One & All:
Okay, sport fans, I need your help. I've been trying to install Linux on a
computer for weeks now and am experiencing a really vexing problem. The
details of the hardware and some of the software appear at the end of this
(lengthy, sorry) posting. Here's the story.
I'm moderately computer literate but almost all of my experience has been
with DOS and the variations of Window$ through W98 SE and as little of
WinXP and Win2000 as I can arrange.
I began with a straight forward installation of Red Hat Linux 7.1 choosing
[EXPERT] mode and "Install Everything." (What the heck? I've got plenty of
disk space and who knows when I'll want to play with a new toy!)
On finishing the installation I get a series of error messages flashing by
far too fast to be read in their entirety, however they start out reading
"Gtk - CRITICAL ***..."
[Note to kernel and application developers: Either the <Pause> key has to
be activated or writing to the screen automagically paused at the end of
each error message, waiting for a key press. If I have this much trouble
trying to read the error messages on a P200, what must those with 1.8+ GHz
machines be experiencing?]
On reboot to Linux I get a bunch of error messages like what follows. I
have no idea what they're referring to or how many of them there are
because (again) the text flashes past too fast for mortal man to read.
"(null): The superblock could not be read or does not describe a correct
ext2 file system. If the device is valid and it really contains an ext2
filesystem (and not swap or ufs or something else), then the superblock is
corrupt, and you might try running e2fsck with an alternative superblock:
e2fsck -b 8193 <device>"
At this point I am prompted to enter my root password for maintenance mode
or to press control-d to reboot.
I have tried various combinations of running e2fsck as recommended,
repartitioning the drives (DOS' fdisk, Linux' fdisk, PartitionMagic 5.01),
reformatting the drives (Linux, PartitionMagic 5.01) and reinstalling RHL
7.1 at least 6 times with no success.
I can manually mount most, if not all, of the Linux partitions, but doing
an "ls -la" on them reveals nothing on most. There are files in /etc,
/bin and /sbin, however that will allow me to use a few limited commands.
The WIN-DOS partitions were automagically mounted and I was able to copy
fstab and dmesg to them. (That's how I can show them to you below.)
Upon rebooting to Window$ I edited fstab to parallel one on a similar
machine that I have access to. Upon rebooting to Linux (with the same
error messages) and logging in as root I copy the "new, improved" fstab to
/etc. Then I reboot to Linux.
Linux at first seems to be booting normally, then I start to get a lot of
[FAILED] messages. (Damn! I wish they'd do something about stopping the
screen scrolling at error messages so I could read them!)
Finally it appears to slam to a halt with the message "Starting system
logger." After 10 or 15 minutes it finally breaks loose and continues to
scroll text by, again sprinkled with [FAILED] error messages I can't read.
Eventually I get to a point where Linux flashes some sort of message about
waiting 5 minutes because X is respawning too fast (or something similar),
and repeats the message every 5 minutes ad infinitum. I can get to a
system prompt with control-c and log in as root but in another 5 or 10
minutes I'm interrupted with the same "X is respawning too fast" message.
I can recover the prompt with control-c.
If I copy the original fstab back to /etc (Yes, I did make a "CYA" copy) I
get to the "Enter root password or press control-d" thingie again.
At no point do I get X or the KDE screen I'm looking for. For what it's
worth, I've installed Linux from these same CDs in approximately the same
way to at least 2 other machines, and while I've had small problems (e.g.,
failing to recognize an Adaptec SCSI card) those other installations
generally went smoothly. Ergo, corrupt CDs probably aren't the cause.
Because all the hardware works under Window$, it probably isn't a faulty
disk drive, controller or other hardware, either.
MY QUESTIONS (AT LAST)
1. What's going wrong?
2. How do I fix it?
This is getting frustrating enough to make Torvalds buy stock in
Micro$oft! I really need to get this thing installed and get on with my
life!
Stanley A. Schultz
Techno-Geek wanabe
**** FOR THE RECORD, HERE ARE ALL THE GORY DETAILS.****
HARDWARE
IBM 300GL w/P200 CPU
Adaptec AHA2940 SCSI card
3Com Etherlink XL (3C-900-TPO) NIC
Cirrus GD5440 (PCI) video card (on board)
HDD: Primary Master (Disk 1): Seagate ST340016A (Barracuda), 40 Gbytes
Partitions: 1st Primary - W98-DOS drive C:
Extended partition containing 12 FAT32 logical
partitions and then 5 ext2 logical partitions.
3rd Primary partition as Linux swap (125.5 Mb)
HDD: Primary Slave (Disk 2): Western Digital WDC AC22500L, 2.4 Gbytes
Partitions: 1st Primary partition in ext2 as /boot
Extended partition containing only 1 logical partition
in ext2 as /
3rd Primary partition as Linux swap (126.0 MB)
HDD: Secondary Master: ATAPI CD-ROM, 24X
HDD: Secondary Slave: None
OPERATING SYSTEMS
Window$ 98 SE
Red Hat Linux 7.1 (Seawolf)
STATUS
Window$ works as well as one might expect it should. (I only have
to reboot it twice a day.) All devices and hardware are functional.
RHL - Attempting to install. Failing miserably, so far.
FSTAB (ORIGINAL)
LABEL=/ / ext2 defaults 1 1
LABEL=/boot /boot ext2 defaults 1 2
/dev/hda7 /data1 vfat defaults 0 0
/dev/hda8 /data2 vfat defaults 0 0
/dev/hda9 /email1 vfat defaults 0 0
/dev/hda10 /email2 vfat defaults 0 0
/dev/hda11 /graffix1 vfat defaults 0 0
/dev/hda12 /graffix2 vfat defaults 0 0
/dev/hda13 /graffix3 vfat defaults 0 0
/dev/hda18 /home ext2 defaults 1 2
/dev/sda1 /jaz vfat defaults 0 0
/dev/fd0 /mnt/floppy auto noauto,owner 0 0
/dev/hda14 /scratch1 vfat defaults 0 0
/dev/hda15 /scratch2 vfat defaults 0 0
/dev/hda16 /scratch3 vfat defaults 0 0
/dev/hda21 /scratch4 ext2 defaults 1 2
/dev/hda19 /tmp ext2 defaults 1 2
/dev/hda17 /usr ext2 defaults 1 2
/dev/hda20 /var ext2 defaults 1 2
/dev/hda5 /w98-apps1 vfat defaults 0 0
/dev/hda6 /w98-apps2 vfat defaults 0 0
/dev/hda1 /w98-sys vfat defaults 0 0
none /proc proc defaults 0 0
none /dev/pts devpts gid=5,mode=620 0 0
/dev/hda3 swap swap defaults 0 0
/dev/hdb3 swap swap defaults 0 0
FSTAB (MY VERSION)
LABEL=/boot /boot ext2 defaults 1 1
LABEL=/ / ext2 defaults 1 2
LABEL=/usr /usr ext2 defaults 1 2
LABEL=/home /home ext2 defaults 1 2
LABEL=/tmp /tmp ext2 defaults 1 2
LABEL=/var /var ext2 defaults 1 2
LABEL=/scratch4 /scratch4 ext2 defaults 1 2
/dev/hda1 /w98-sys vfat defaults 0 0
/dev/hda5 /w98-apps1 vfat defaults 0 0
/dev/hda6 /w98-apps2 vfat defaults 0 0
/dev/hda7 /data1 vfat defaults 0 0
/dev/hda8 /data2 vfat defaults 0 0
/dev/hda9 /email1 vfat defaults 0 0
/dev/hda10 /email2 vfat defaults 0 0
/dev/hda11 /graffix1 vfat defaults 0 0
/dev/hda12 /graffix2 vfat defaults 0 0
/dev/hda13 /graffix3 vfat defaults 0 0
/dev/hda14 /scratch1 vfat defaults 0 0
/dev/hda15 /scratch2 vfat defaults 0 0
/dev/hda16 /scratch3 vfat defaults 0 0
/dev/sda1 /jaz vfat defaults 0 0
/dev/fd0 /mnt/floppy auto noauto,owner 0 0
none /proc proc defaults 0 0
none /dev/pts devpts gid=5,mode=620 0 0
/dev/hda3 swap swap defaults 0 0
/dev/hdb3 swap swap defaults 0 0
DMESG
Linux version 2.4.2-2 ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) (gcc version 2.96 20000731 (Red
Hat Linux 7.1 2.96-79)) #1 Sun Apr 8 19:37:14 EDT 2001 BIOS-provided physical RAM map:
BIOS-e820: 000000000009fc00 @ 0000000000000000 (usable)
BIOS-e820: 0000000000000400 @ 000000000009fc00 (reserved) BIOS-e820:
0000000000020000 @ 00000000000e0000 (reserved) BIOS-e820: 0000000003f00000 @
0000000000100000 (usable)
BIOS-e820: 0000000000001000 @ 00000000fec00000 (reserved) BIOS-e820:
0000000000001000 @ 00000000fee00000 (reserved) BIOS-e820: 0000000000020000 @
00000000fffe0000 (reserved) On node 0 totalpages: 16384
zone(0): 4096 pages.
zone DMA has max 32 cached pages.
zone(1): 12288 pages.
zone Normal has max 96 cached pages.
zone(2): 0 pages.
zone HighMem has max 1 cached pages.
hm, page 01000000 reserved twice.
Kernel command line: auto BOOT_IMAGE=linux ro root=345 BOOT_FILE=/boot/vmlinuz-2.4.2-2
Initializing CPU#0
Detected 199.436 MHz processor.
Console: colour VGA+ 80x25
Calibrating delay loop... 398.13 BogoMIPS
Memory: 61692k/65536k available (1363k kernel code, 3456k reserved, 92k data, 232k
init, 0k highmem) Dentry-cache hash table entries: 8192 (order: 4, 65536 bytes)
Buffer-cache hash table entries: 4096 (order: 2, 16384 bytes) Page-cache hash table
entries: 16384 (order: 5, 131072 bytes) Inode-cache hash table entries: 4096 (order:
3, 32768 bytes) VFS: Diskquotas version dquot_6.5.0 initialized
CPU: Before vendor init, caps: 008001bf 00000000 00000000, vendor = 0 Intel Pentium
with F0 0F bug - workaround enabled.
CPU: After vendor init, caps: 008001bf 00000000 00000000 00000000 CPU: After generic,
caps: 008001bf 00000000 00000000 00000000 CPU: Common caps: 008001bf 00000000 00000000
00000000
CPU: Intel Pentium MMX stepping 03
Checking 'hlt' instruction... OK.
POSIX conformance testing by UNIFIX
mtrr: v1.37 (20001109) Richard Gooch ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) mtrr: detected mtrr type:
none
PCI: PCI BIOS revision 2.10 entry at 0xfd8bc, last bus=0
PCI: Using configuration type 1
PCI: Probing PCI hardware
Limiting direct PCI/PCI transfers.
Activating ISA DMA hang workarounds.
isapnp: Scanning for PnP cards...
isapnp: No Plug & Play device found
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 1.14)
Starting kswapd v1.8
pty: 256 Unix98 ptys configured
block: queued sectors max/low 40872kB/13624kB, 128 slots per queue RAMDISK driver
initialized: 16 RAM disks of 4096K size 1024 blocksize Uniform Multi-Platform E-IDE
driver Revision: 6.31
ide: Assuming 33MHz system bus speed for PIO modes; override with idebus=xx PIIX3: IDE
controller on PCI bus 00 dev 09
PIIX3: chipset revision 0
PIIX3: not 100% native mode: will probe irqs later
ide0: BM-DMA at 0xfff0-0xfff7, BIOS settings: hda:DMA, hdb:DMA ide1: BM-DMA at
0xfff8-0xffff, BIOS settings: hdc:DMA, hdd:pio hda: ST340016A, ATA DISK drive
hdb: WDC AC22500L, ATA DISK drive
hdc: , ATAPI CD/DVD-ROM drive
ide0 at 0x1f0-0x1f7,0x3f6 on irq 14
ide1 at 0x170-0x177,0x376 on irq 15
hda: 78165360 sectors (40021 MB) w/2048KiB Cache, CHS=4865/255/63, (U)DMA hdb: 4999680
sectors (2560 MB) w/256KiB Cache, CHS=620/128/63, (U)DMA Partition check:
hda: [DM6:DDO] [remap +63] [4865/255/63] hda1 hda2 < hda5 hda6 hda7 hda8 hda9 hda10
hda11 hda12 hda13 hda14 hda15 hda16 hda17 hda18 hda19 hda20 hda21 > hda3 hdb: hdb1
hdb2 < hdb5 > hdb3
Floppy drive(s): fd0 is 1.44M
FDC 0 is a National Semiconductor PC87306
RAMDISK: Compressed image found at block 0
Freeing initrd memory: 359k freed
Serial driver version 5.02 (2000-08-09) with MANY_PORTS MULTIPORT SHARE_IRQ SERIAL_PCI
ISAPNP enabled ttyS00 at 0x03f8 (irq = 4) is a 16550A
ttyS01 at 0x02f8 (irq = 3) is a 16550A
Real Time Clock Driver v1.10d
md driver 0.90.0 MAX_MD_DEVS=256, MD_SB_DISKS=27
md.c: sizeof(mdp_super_t) = 4096
autodetecting RAID arrays
autorun ...
... autorun DONE.
NET4: Linux TCP/IP 1.0 for NET4.0
IP Protocols: ICMP, UDP, TCP, IGMP
IP: routing cache hash table of 512 buckets, 4Kbytes
TCP: Hash tables configured (established 4096 bind 4096)
Linux IP multicast router 0.06 plus PIM-SM
NET4: Unix domain sockets 1.0/SMP for Linux NET4.0.
VFS: Mounted root (ext2 filesystem).
SCSI subsystem driver Revision: 1.00
(scsi0) <Adaptec AHA-294X Ultra SCSI host adapter> found at PCI 0/11/0 (scsi0) Narrow
Channel, SCSI ID=7, 16/255 SCBs
(scsi0) Cables present (Int-50 NO, Ext-50 NO)
(scsi0) Downloading sequencer code... 436 instructions downloaded scsi0 : Adaptec
AHA274x/284x/294x (EISA/VLB/PCI-Fast SCSI) 5.2.4/5.2.0 <Adaptec AHA-294X Ultra
SCSI host adapter>
Vendor: iomega Model: jaz 1GB Rev: J.86
Type: Direct-Access ANSI SCSI revision: 02 Attached scsi
removable disk sda at scsi0, channel 0, id 6, lun 0 (scsi0:0:6:0) Synchronous at 10.0
Mbyte/sec, offset 15.
SCSI device sda: 2091050 512-byte hdwr sectors (1071 MB)
sda: Write Protect is off
sda: sda1
VFS: Mounted root (ext2 filesystem) readonly.
change_root: old root has d_count=3
Trying to unmount old root ... okay
Freeing unused kernel memory: 232k freed
Adding Swap: 128480k swap-space (priority -1)
Adding Swap: 128984k swap-space (priority -2)
usb.c: registered new driver usbdevfs
usb.c: registered new driver hub
usb-uhci.c: $Revision: 1.251 $ time 19:51:15 Apr 8 2001
usb-uhci.c: High bandwidth mode enabled
usb-uhci.c: USB UHCI at I/O 0x5440, IRQ 11
usb-uhci.c: Detected 2 ports
usb.c: new USB bus registered, assigned bus number 1
hub.c: USB hub found
hub.c: 2 ports detected
[Nothing more after this entry]
