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The install on my Cyrix MII machine seemed to go fine. Installed RH7.1 on a 2nd hard disk. LILO works, booting Win98 by default. I can boot Linux using the install CD, but when I attempt to boot Linux from disk, it gets as far as "Starting kswapd" and then hangs. I then have to power off.
I've got some Unix background, but am new to Linux. Since I don't see any console messages from init, I suppose it's getting stuck after starting kswapd and before starting /sbin/init, based on what I read about the boot process.
When I boot from the install CD, I do see the console message about "RAM disk driver initialized: ...". So maybe the problem is with parallel port, serial port, or SCSI bus initialization. Does that make sense?
Here are my ideas about which directions to go next: a) learn how to use setserial and probing techniques to see if there is a config problem with the serial or parallel port, b) try installing more modules on the theory that maybe I didn't ask for a crucial one at installation, c) learn how to rebuild a kernel with extra print statements to try to further isolate the problem, d) somehow disable initialization of serial and parallel ports since they are not critical.
I hope somebody knows something specific to try, or at least which of the above approaches to take. If I could just get it boot cleanly from disk, even without serial and parallel ports, I would be very happy!
What makes you feel that its something to do with serial / parallel ports or whas that just a hunch? I was going to suggest that its failing reading part of the kernel but IIRC the whole kernel will be uncompressed into RAM from the disk before this stage so that can't be that case.
Have you tried bringing up the system in 'single' mode first? On your LILO prompt type 'linux single' (Assuming that your linux image is called 'linux'!) I think there is some keystroke to lose Redhat's boot screen, it might be F9 but not being of the Redhat camp I'm not too sure.
I can't say that I've ever had a problem with support for a device not being in the kernel causing this sorta problem. One extreme thing you could try would be to disable/remove everything in the system that you don't need. That way if it is trying to initialise a device then falling over you can work around the problem until you can recompile the kernel/find the setting to sort the problem out properly. In your BIOS turn off anything like onboard soundcard, serial / parallel ports, USB ports etc. Then pull any cards you can do without (SCSI card if you are on IDE HDDs) - network card etc...
Thanks for the thoughts. I tried booting to single user, using "linux single" as you suggested. No change. In reading an article "A Guided Tour of a Linux Boot", it seems that a console message "INIT: version ..." should appear just before it starts going up through the runlevels. I don't get that far. The same article indicates that about the only thing that happens after "Starting kswapd ..." and "INIT: version ..." is device driver initialization; that's the only basis for my suspecting the serial or parallel ports (they are pretty standard as far as I know and work fine under Windows).
Your idea about disabling them in BIOS and physically removing what I can is a good one. If that would get it to boot, then I could narrow down the issue.
The appearance of the link if the forum changing the links name, i.e. the bit between the > and the </a>. The link itself will still be what you typed.
Problem resolved. I decided to learn how to rebuild the kernel, to see if that by itself made a difference and, if not, prepare to inject some printk's to isolate the problem. The rebuilt kernel worked. I don't know why the one resulting from the RH7.1 installation sequence wouldn't work.
I'm having the same problem on my linux install ...
It might even be the same type of machine .... its one of those FreePc's -- cyrix mII ...
it always hangs on starting kswapd .... and i cant figure out why ...
im a complete newbie and im not really sure what to do next ...
Nicanor .... seems like rebuilding the kernel is something I could do ... are there some good resources you could point me to in case I wanted to do that ... or is there another solution you can think of ?
I'm also having the same problem - I've installed both Red Hat 7.1 and Mandrake 8.0, several times (!!!) and whenever the PC reboots after the installation process I get to "Starting kswapd v1.8" and then it just hangs.
My processor is reported as a "CyrixInstead 6x86MX(tm)" - maybe it is the chip?
I would really appreciate any help in what to do as I would like to learn about Linux but I wouldn't know where to start if I have to do something like rebuilding the kernel. For example, how do you rebuild the kernel if the PC wont get past the kswapd part?
Any pointers or information would really be greatly appreciated.
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