This is my first time installing KnoppMyth (or indeed any linux). I put together a system which I expected to work "out of the box" but it keeps hanging up during boot. Here are the details:

7nif2
Hauppauge 250 PVR
relying on onboard video
512 MB Ram
200 GB HD
Athlon 2600

When installing (first time):
- at boot prompt i typed: knoppmyth <enter>
- entered user information successfully
- was told installation was successful
- reboot

The system starts up, and then after the line "256 Unix98 ptys configured" it seems to block. It will sit there forever on that screen.

I am using a USB keyboard mouse, and someone told me that may be no good, so I swapped to PS/2, but still had no luck.

I tried redownloading the iso (checksum matched), and reinstalling (twice) once using the same setup, and once using "tv" at the promt, rather than "knoppmyth". Both installs were successful, but the system stops at the same location.

I then tried grabbing a Knoppix iso, and tried booting from that as a "live" cd, and it booted with no issues, if that means anything at all.

Can anyone give me some pointers on how to find the problem? I've no Linux experience, and am not sure how to proceed.

Thanks,

-swc

Nasty. Not a problem I'd wish on a newbie. Here's a rough outline of what I'd try next... Are you using R4V2 or V3?

Boot from the Knoppix live CD you made. Mount the root partition (/dev/hda1) on /mnt/hda1 (you may need to mkdir that first). This will give you access to the log files (under /mnt/hda1/var/log). The "messages", "syslog" and maybe "boot.log" files will probably be the most helpful. The last things in the files should help you pin down where it's getting wedged.

Another thing to try is unplugging anything you don't absolutely need (monitor, keyboard and mouse) to boot the machine. USB keyboard and mouse can be problematic. Also check your BIOS and disable any ports that you're not using.

I don't have access to my KnoppMyth box from here but the next thing in the boot sequence on this WS is setting up the serial ports/drivers.

I am using R3.

Posting from the LiveCD now.

messages and syslog are both empty. boot.log does not exist, or at least not in the var/log directory here. Pretty much the only log with anything in it at all is the XFree86.0.log, which doesn't have anything in it that raises any flags, upon inspection.

I was booting without a mouse. I was under the impression that I had to have a keyboard connected, as my bios displays a messages that says "keyboard missing" and won't boot until one is attached. I'll try getting through the bios and then pulling the keyboard, too.

Thanks for giving me some feedback.

-swc

Well, I'm baffled.

I booted up with all peripherals unattached, and when I come back and connect my monitor later, I still get to the same spot as before. I have not found anything in the bios that I can shut down/turn off.



What does WS stand for?

Sorry I wasn't clear. I meant unplug everything EXCEPT your monitor, keyboard and mouse and try to avoid the USB ones there.

I've also got access to the KnoppMyth box now and it's log indicates the next thing in boot order is... The floppy!



Do you have a floppy drive on your system? If not, do you have it disabled in BIOS? If so, is there a disk in the drive?

Go through your BIOS and disable any devices like the parallel port, floppy, ... that you're not using. E.g. - My MoBo has an output header for a parallel port but I'll never use it on the Myth box - disabled, the box also doesn't have a floppy - floppy controller disabled, ... Are you going plug game controllers into the box? If not disable those. Are you planning on using the serial ports for anything? If not ... You get the picture...

BTW - WS == workstation, aka a PC for serious users.[/quote]

Alright, I do not have a floppy, so I checked the BIOS for that. By default, Drive A was set to NONE, which was correct. I went in and set the FDC to NONE as well, so the controller isn't the issue either.

Even with both of those settings turned off, I do not get the "floppy0: no floppy controllers found" that you list. I still just hang. Just for the heck of it, I tried setting Drive A to "Floppy" in the BIOS, and with that set, I get one more line when booting:

despite there not really being a drive there. After which the machine hangs. I'm not sure whether that indicates that the problem is after the floppy, or not. Are those messages output after the device is set up?

In any case, I also went through, and turned off the game port, lpt port, and modem handler. No dice there.

This is not turning out to be the nice gentle introduction to Linux I was hoping for. Heh.

Thanks for your patience and help here, it is definitely helping me at least note the kind of process I should go through. Is there a way to determine the boot order without seeing a successful boot log?

Also, in my previous post, I should have said: R4V3, instead of R3.

Anytime you build a box yourself it's best to plan on an adventure. I'm an old Unix/Linux hand (pre 0.99!) and this project threw me some curves, most of them related to hardware/firmware interactions.

For you the next thing to look at is probably the HD setup and drivers. You might also want to try doing a quick and dirty installation of a different version (KnoppMyth R4V2, ...) to see if that makes a difference.

Just to close the thread:

Ended up being an issue with the keyboard, of all things. The USB keyboard, as suspected, was no good. But apparently the system didn't like something in the first ps/2 keyboard I used either. I brought home a second keyboard on a hunch, and sure enough, was able to boot up using that keyboard. Unbelievable.

Well, I still learned alot about the boot up process, and troubleshooting issues that come up. Got to start building experience somewhere.

Thanks tjc, for your help along the way here.

Now, off to usage issues! Heh.

-swc

Hey, what good is hard won experience if you can't impose it on newbies?

wow I had the same problem with it hangging at boot and I replaced my usb keybaord with a ps/2 and bam it works Thanks so much for sharing your problem

I am getting the Unix98 pty problem as well. It did it the first time I installed v4r4 and so I fiddled for a while, with no luck and thought I'd just try and install debian instead. That all installed fine and I had a play around with it (I'd never used the Debian distro before), got annoyed and thought I'd try the KnoppMyth CD again, which installed and booted OK (As far as I know I didn't do anything different). I fiddled with this so much, trying to get my PVR card working, I thought, I'd reinstall again as lots of other things were giving me grief, now I knew what the PVR needed.

Now it is sticking at the 256 Unix98 ptys configured part of the boot again. No matter what I do it seems to keep sticking there. This box is an HP Evo 530 ultra slim desktop. It only has USB, No PS/2 sockets to try.

I'm going to try upgrading the kernel, I'll let you know how it goes. I'm on dialup at the moment so It'll take a while to DL.

Well that was a spectacular failure

I installed the kernel-image-2.4.26-1-686 debian kernel. Which did exactly the same thing. I think it might be a problem with the initrd stuff as that appears to be about the next thing on my system since I don't have floppy drive. Time to keep fiddling

Actually the 2.4.26 debian kernel allowed me to boot. I had not updated my lilo.conf properly, so it was still booting the knoppmyth kernel. I think the answer here is to fix the kernel that comes with noppmyth so it supports the no KB and USB keyboards without any problems or compile your own.

i'm going to have a play with the kernel source to see if I can compile one that works