DSL Kernel Panic & Failed Boot on P133/16mb Ram
Forum: Laptops
Topic: DSL Kernel Panic & Failed Boot on P133/16mb Ram
started by: ejecta
Posted by ejecta on Feb. 02 2007,10:41
Hi,I'm the proud owner of a Tosbiha Satellite 440 CDX Laptop, it's a Pentium 1 - 133mhz with 16mb RAM and a 1.3GB harddisk.
I purchased a new v3.2 DSL cd and it works fine via Qemu on my Win2k box, however when I tried booting from cd on the laptop the following happens:
< http://i18.photobucket.com/albums/b117/ejecta/panic.jpg >
I've tried failsale, vga=normal, etc and nothing seems to change the failed boot, although in failsafe the error does seem to occurr later, but normally its when it's "setting paths" I think (text scrolls up rather fast). It does appear to detect all the devices fine though (only have Cdrom/HD plugged in).
So erm... help?
I should add I'm quite the linux "n00b" coming from a microsoft career from Dos 3.1 onwards.
Posted by curaga on Feb. 02 2007,16:55
Either your memory is faulty or you have too little of it.Do you have a swap?
Have you tried the extra-low-ram mode (from the wiki)?
Posted by ^thehatsrule^ on Feb. 02 2007,21:31
From forum search:Try booting with "mem=16M"
If its an error on pcmcia, try "nopcmcia"
Of course, if you don't have a swap set up yet, you can combine the lowram, etc. parameters with these.
Posted by ejecta on Feb. 02 2007,22:35
The memory definitely isn't faulty as prior the machine runs Win98SE "fine" albeit a little sluggish.I've no idea how to do/make the swap you've mentioned... although I will have more of a fiddle around tonight.
Good news though! using "dsl mem=16m" it fully boots and starts X however it's morning at the moment so the little ones thought the laptop was the best toy ever so after carefully guarding it for 10 minutes and it still trying to load X I gave up... will sit down tonight with it and see what I can do as I'd really prefer to be using linux than 98.
Posted by ^thehatsrule^ on Feb. 03 2007,00:14
Assuming you have a hard drive,You can make a swap partition by using a partitioning tool (DSL contains fdisk and cfdisk by default).
You can also use/create dos/windows type pagefiles.
Posted by ejecta on Feb. 03 2007,05:37
I've encountered a new issue, the system itself now appears to boot okay, however when X starts the grey/white diagonal background appears with a mouse-cursor cross, it then flogs the cd drive for 20 minutes, then changes to a mouse-pointer cursor and then promptly stops flogging the cd drive and nothing futher happens...Any ideas?
Posted by ^thehatsrule^ on Feb. 03 2007,06:28
Like I have indicated earlier, you are on low resources.Activate swap, and/or use lowram/'superlowram'
Posted by ejecta on Feb. 03 2007,07:03
Hmms, that was with lowram... lemme try out the swap and/or superlow ram in the case.
Posted by ejecta on Feb. 03 2007,07:37
Just tried "dsl mem=16m superlowram nopcmcia"Still died...
I'm thinking it might be easier sell the laptop off for $50 on ebay and buy a $40 pentium 3-1ghz box :P
Posted by curaga on Feb. 03 2007,13:01
superlowram is not a cheat code, it's a series of codes, you'll find it in the wiki.I've got X and everything else working on a P1-120 with 16mb of ram. Even the textmode is pain without swap...
Here's a step-by-step on how to create swap:
Boot super low text mode:
dsl 1 vga=normal atapicd noideraid nosound noapic noacpi acpi=off noscsi noapm nousb nopcmcia nofirewire noagp nomce mem=16M
using cfdisk make atleast a 64mb partition, change it's type to swap (I think it was 83 but the program lists them for you), write the partition table, exit. If the partition you just made is hda2, format it:
mkswap /dev/hda2
now reboot with the usual codes (maybe dsl lowram mem=16M) and it'll recognize and use the new swap partition.
Posted by WDef on Feb. 03 2007,14:07
dsl on that PIII box will absolutely *scream* along (esp with a toram boot). I doubt there'd be any comparison at all to the p1 laptop.
Posted by ejecta on Feb. 03 2007,22:43
Yeah, but with the disadvantage I can't use it sitting on the lounge whilst the kiddo's what <insert childrens movie> for the 200th time ;)I've fished around on eBay here in OZ tho and found out I can probably get $100 for the lappy and score a p3 for ~$20. Now just to work out whether to do that or to hose the existing install *ponders*
Thanks for all the help nonetheless folks