[KLUG Members] Help with a pervasive problem.

[Patrick Stockton]

You say the boot tells you the memory is bad.  Have you tried different
memory in the system to verify you don't have bad ram?

Reading over your post it might be that the kernel installed on the hard
drive does not have proper support for your SCSI card compiled in, while the
boot disk kernels are generic enough to have that driver compiled as a
module.

Have you only tried it with Slackware?  The default installed Slackware
kernel in my expierance has been on the lean side with few modules.  Have
you tried different distros such as Red Hat or Mandrake which compiles
everything as modules.  You might try booting with a boot disk and rolling
your own kernel under Slackware (a kick ass distro if you ask me) and verify
you have proper support for your hardware compiled in.

Just my idea.

Patrick

----- Original Message -----
From: "Adam Bultman" <adamb@glaven.org>
To: <members@kalamazoolinux.org>
Sent: Tuesday, January 29, 2002 9:15 AM
Subject: [KLUG Members] Help with a pervasive problem.


> I don'w know if I have written about this before, so here it goes:
>
> System:
> Gigabyte Motherboard w/ AC 97 audio
> Duron 900
> 256 MB RAM
> 3COM 3C980B NIC
> Symbios SCSI card with attached 10k RPM drive
> Quantum Bigfoot (ick) drive
> WD 40 GB drive.
> Voodoo3 3000
>
> okay. this system will NOT run linux. At least, it won't boot itself.
> I've installed some 3 distros on it, and <i>it will not boot</i>.  The
> install goes fine-- on the SCSI drive, on the bigfoot, etc.  When it comes
> to booting, it will start-- just fine, I might add-- but it fails, says
> that memory is bad, blah blah blah, and it dies.  Sending the Three Finger
> Salute doesn't even help, it catches it, and displays how THAT failed.
>
> The RAM is fine, the drives are fine, and the system will boot from a boot
> disk, or better yet, the Slackware Boot CDROM, but it will not boot
> itself!  This has been the single most frustrating problem I have ever
> encountered because I so badly want to run linux on it.  And every time I
> try, it fails.  I want to say it's something with initrd, and the
> ramdisks, but I'm not sure-- because beehive linux ran fine on it, and I'm
> sure that didn't use initrd. Question is, can I remove that?  does initrd
> really DO anything, or is it just to 'speed things up'?  This system would
> rock if it only booted to the kernel without a boot disk.  Maybe I'll just
> have to screw it all and stick with beehive and it's coolness.  I wanted
> redhat for Evolution (I have neither the time nor the patience to
> discover, find, download, and install the million dependencies, and the
> million other non-recoverable dependences that crop up) but shucks, it
> looks like I'm still screwed.
>
> Has anyone else had this roblem?    It's making me go insane, one reboot
> at a time.
>
> adam
>
> --
> Adam Bultman
> adamb@glaven.org
>
>
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