boot problem on compaq armada 1520D

Message

grinnalot · #1 Post by **grinnalot** » Fri 25 Nov 2005, 01:51

Hi,

I got this old Compaq Armada 1520D (133 MHz, 48 MB RAM, 4 G HD) and I would really like to see it run on a nice small Linux, coz win98 is a bit slow. I only want to do simple things like IM, surfing and emailing (for starters).

So I flashed the BIOS and now it boots from CD (pffiuww) and burned the puppy 1.0.6 mozilla iso. It starts booting rather well, I get the splash screen with the picture of The Puppy and then a whole lot of messages.

Then it hanges at:

kmod: failed to exec /sbin/modprobe -s -k binfmt-0000, errno = 8

I am rather new to Linux so help will be appreciated.... a lot...

Cheerz,

Grinnalot

Sage · #2 Post by **Sage** » Fri 25 Nov 2005, 05:43

I've had similar booting stalls with several older machines. [I'm even waiting for a reply on another thread but have had no suggestions yet]. It seems there are several delays built into the start up procedure and that these can be a big problem. Puppy doesn't have comprehensive cheat codes at present. DSL has the full range of Knoppix start-up options. Did I read that BK had looked at the Knoppix detection engine option at one time? There certainly was some discussion along those lines recently.

grinnalot · #3 Post by **grinnalot** » Fri 25 Nov 2005, 11:26

Hi Sage...

Experimenting with DSL as well .. .. runs completely only with very ugly graphics/colors. Grrinzzz...let's see which distro will make the Compaq excel.

Cheerz

tempestuous · #4 Post by **tempestuous** » Fri 25 Nov 2005, 13:20

Puppy running from CD requires a lot of RAM - 64MB I think (?). Your boot failure might be as simple as this ... never mind about hardware detection.
But if Puppy can find a suitable swap partition during bootup then the RAM requirement is less. I can't give you firm details on this, you will need to investigate it yourself.
And with a full uncompressed hard drive installation, with swap partition, Puppy will work with as little RAM as possible (32MB I think?) ... but the trick is getting it installed.

DSL's demands on RAM are far lower. You can run DSL from CD with as little as 32MB, and even less if you use boot options to disable desktop icons, dockapps, and unnecessary services. Once installed to hard drive, 16MB is adequate with DSL.

Regarding graphics, your Cirrus CL-GD7548 chipset appears troublesome in Linux. Don't blame Puppy.
Older laptop graphics adaptors like this will almost certainly not be supported by the Xvesa xserver in either Puppy or DSL.

The "standard" DSL release includes a less powerful xserver, xfbdev, which can be selected during bootup. This may work for you, and the boot option fb800x600 might help, too.

With both Puppy and DSL, you could install a more powerful xserver like XF86_SVGA, XFree86, or xorg, which are more likely to cope with your graphics adaptor.

Sage · #5 Post by **Sage** » Fri 25 Nov 2005, 14:15

Thanks for those comments, t. I try to set up an HD installation on state-of-the-art kit before transferring it. More than 128Mb is necessary for an initial install, but it will run on 32Mb (just) subsequently if a small swap partition is created (this can be as small as 48Mb, despite recommendations for more).
I appreciate the very different modi operandus (did I get my Latin parsing correct?) between Puppy & DSL, but there may be scope for some mutual co-mingling (old terminology was cross-fertilisation, but that's now used for very different processes!) between DSL and Puppy?
Either way it doesn't answer my previous enquiry about stalling at the 'scsi sub-system driver Revision 1.0' statement???

#6 Post by **Flash** » Fri 25 Nov 2005, 15:10

Here's a way that might work to modify the boot sequence. Let us know if it works.

Sage · #7 Post by **Sage** » Fri 25 Nov 2005, 15:55

Thanks - I missed that one this morning. Seems that 'cheat codes' are more universal than supposed. Would be useful to have a collection somewhere.

grinnalot · #8 Post by **grinnalot** » Fri 25 Nov 2005, 16:02

Sorry flash ... your bootline did not work...

what i could id is use DSL to make a swap partittion.... question remains if puppy will find that one ....

CHeerz

#9 Post by **Flash** » Fri 25 Nov 2005, 20:14

grinnalot wrote:Sorry flash ... your bootline did not work...

For the sake of closure, just what did you try, and what happened?

mayakovski · #10 Post by **mayakovski** » Fri 25 Nov 2005, 20:30

grinnalot wrote:Sorry flash ... your bootline did not work...

what i could id is use DSL to make a swap partittion.... question remains if puppy will find that one ....

CHeerz

You have the right idea. I have a 1580DMT, P150 and 49MB RAM.

What I did was boot into DSL, use cfdisk to create a swap partition.
Open terminal
sudo cfdisk
create new partition (I choose 300MB), then make it type 82 (Linux Swap).
write it out to disk.
Reboot with Puppylinux. Puppy should find the swap partition automatically.

If it does not boot DSL use cfdisk to delete all partitions, then create swap partition. Reboot and now Puppy should find it as it is the first one.

Good Luck.

I am working on getting this into PLDP (Puppy Linux Documentation Project).
Here is my first block on HD installs, but you can use it to get the CD booting.

http://puppylinux.org/docs/pre/?Install ... Disk_Drive

grinnalot · #11 Post by **grinnalot** » Fri 25 Nov 2005, 22:11

Progress report

trying Flash's option did not change a bit .... system halted at the same point as before.... thank you for playing... please play again....

after creating 880 MB swap at the end of the HD things changed....
first I get a 60 s holg at the line : swapon: /dev/hda2: Invalid argument

boot proceeds till next stop:
mount: Mounting none on /usr failed

What flabbergasted me the most is the last stop

PASSWORD:

__alloc_pages: 0-order allocation failed (gfp=0x1d2/0)
VM: killing process login

Amusing that a password is required....
Please keep sending me suggestions on how to proceed...

Cheerz

Eric

mayakovski · #12 Post by **mayakovski** » Fri 25 Nov 2005, 22:49

Hmm;

I had originally gotten that password issue as well but that was before making a Swap partition.

I do not think that a password is really needed, something is killing as per the error the user account being used to boot Puppy.

I went and totally wiped my HD blank and then used DSL to make the Swap Partition, after that it was smooth sailing. You might try using the SystemRescueCd to wipe the drive and them make the Swap Partition.

Here are my instructions from PLDP.

IF COMPUTER HAS LESS THAN 128MB RAM.
Step 1.
You will need to either have a Linux Swap Partition or create a Linux Swap Partition (type 82) before you can boot Puppy.

You can boot a different version of Linux such as DSL (Damn Small Linux) that needs only 32MB RAM and does not need a swap partition and use that to create a swap partition using fdisk or cfdisk.
Or.
Download the SystemRescueCd http://www.sysresccd.org/ and burn it to a CD, use this CD to boot your system and create a 300MB swap parition.
Detailed instruction here:
http://zjd.zj.funpic.org/cool/dsl14.html.

Basic instructions here:
At the boot prompt type "run_qtparted", follow the prompts and create your 300MB swap partition. Close out of the SystemRescueCd.

Step 2.
Now, is insert the Puppy CD and boot the computer.

After answering the keyboard, mouse and vide mode questions you will be running Puppy Linux in RAM with a swap partition mounted.

cjayadevan · #13 Post by **cjayadevan** » Sat 26 Nov 2005, 10:33

Hello,
I would like to suggest you boot puppy 1.0.5 and check if it is going. You can give a try in ur free times:)
regards
Jay

grinnalot · #14 Post by **grinnalot** » Sat 26 Nov 2005, 12:43

First of all I would like to thank you all... the response on this forum keeps me enthusiastic to make this puppy run...

However....

If I completely wipe my HD I got nothing left. The ultimate goal is to make my Compaq a dual boot machine. I do not have a win98 installation disk so i will keep that one for the time being.
The next step will be to find a way that puppy accepts the Swap partition.

Secondly, it would be nice to try Puppy 1.0.5 as Jay suggested but where can i find the .iso ???

Compliments for the forum

Grinnalot

Ian · #15 Post by **Ian** » Sat 26 Nov 2005, 13:15

Did you format your swap partition as a swap partition.

You can download Puppy 1.0.5 from some of these downoad sites.

http://pupweb.org/puppy/download/downpage.htm

Try this one:

http://ftp.nluug.nl/ftp/pub/os/Linux/distr/puppylinux

grinnalot · #16 Post by **grinnalot** » Sat 26 Nov 2005, 14:01

This is how I created the swap partition

With Partition Magic I moved the win98 partition to the back of the HD (probably useless but I wanted puppy to feel welcom at the front door).

I booted DSL 0.6.2 and opened a Bash window. With sudo cfdisk I entered cfdsik. With [New] I made a new partition of 400 MB at [Beginning] and with [Type] I designated it to be a Linux Swap (type 82). Of course I used [Write] to realize this repartitioning.

When I try to reboot Puppy 1.0.6 it somehow notices there is a swap space on /hda2 but does not seem to be able to put it to use.....

Meanwhile Puppy 1.0.5 is down so I'll see what this puppy will do.

Suggestions appreciated

Grinnalot

#17 Post by **Flash** » Sat 26 Nov 2005, 14:27

grinnalot wrote:...trying Flash's option did not change a bit...

The post I referred to was only meant to give the general idea how to use boot options in Puppy. It was not meant that you should use those boot options. You will have to decide what options to put.

...What flabbergasted me the most is the last stop

PASSWORD:

__alloc_pages: 0-order allocation failed (gfp=0x1d2/0)
VM: killing process login

...

Two things: 1.) you are using VM?, and, 2.) When the password issue has come up in the forum it was found that the problem was a corrupt pup001 file. If you tried to boot Puppy from CD on this machine, Puppy tried to create a pup001 file on the hard drive somewhere. Inspect the hard drive for a pup001 file and delete it if you find it.

grinnalot · #18 Post by **grinnalot** » Sat 26 Nov 2005, 14:35

Hi Flash

Yeah vmlinux starts automatically with booting from CD.

OK ... will look for the puppy 001 file

IN general:
Puppy 1.0.5 does not get passed the Splash screen....

those puppy's are playfull....

Grinnalot

grinnalot · #19 Post by **grinnalot** » Sat 26 Nov 2005, 16:37

AS it appears the first burn of Puppy 1.0.5 was not a good burn, coz it failed to boot on the test machine as welll.

SO I burned another and on the test machine this one booted well. On the Compaq however it got stuck at the same point as Puppy 1.0.6.

Still looking for Puppy0001 files....

Cheerz

Grinnalot

grinnalot · #20 Post by **grinnalot** » Sat 26 Nov 2005, 20:01

Another option..... requiring some assistence...

I got Feather linux now installed on my HD but I am not entirely satisfied with the graphics. Since Puppy looks great on my test machine I stil want to give it a go. So here is the question....

Can I install Puppy on the HD from working in Feather ?
if so.... how would I go about it ?

Cheerz

Grinnalot

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boot problem on compaq armada 1520D

boot problem on compaq armada 1520D

Wont you wish to try this?..