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Legacy Forums => Experienced User Forum => Topic started by: Adam Richmond-Gordon on December 06, 2003, 04:23:39 AM

Title: Lockup at first boot (possible hardware problem??)
Post by: Adam Richmond-Gordon on December 06, 2003, 04:23:39 AM

This might be a bizarre one...

I've just performed an install of SME 5.6 onto a machine of mine.

The installation appeared to go fine, although a little slow in places.

Now when I try to start up the computer, it freezes during the boot process, and I was wondering if anyone else has had similar trouble. The annoying thing is that I have an installation off the same CD on a Cyrix 150MHz, and it runs perfectly.

The freeze seems to be occouring at random places, although these two items seem to be the last thing done more often;

'Starting network' and 'Starting e-smith_httpd'.

The hardware of the machine is as follows;

EPoX EP-3VWM2 Motherboard (VIA chipset with latest BIOS flash)
VIA C-3 700MHz Processor (socket 370 with HSF)
3Com Network Card (going to cable modem)
SiS Network Card (going to network switch)
64MB PC100 SD-RAM
8.4GB Fujitsu Hard Drive (IDE)
NEC 1x CD-ROM (IDE)

Onboard Video, USB, Audio (disabled in BIOS), Modem (also, disabled in BIOS)

The system is not overclocked, and the RAM timings are set to the slowest possible (i.e. CAS 3, FSB 100)

The system is using 2MB of system RAM for the onboard video controller, and is set to have an AGP aperature of 4MB. All caching is enabled, as is L2 ECC checking (SD-RAM ECC is not enabled, as the RAM I'm using doesn't have the ECC chip on it).

Can you see from here if I am doing anything wrong??

Any help appreciated, Adam.

[%sig%]

Title: Re: Lockup at first boot (possible hardware problem??)
Post by: Warren Blackbeard on December 06, 2003, 09:54:14 AM

Adam ,

A thought,
I've had a machine that was locking up on loading / boot "vmlinux....."
Turned out that the CPU fan was not working.
A new fan and no more locking.

Warren

[%sig%]

Title: Re: Lockup at first boot (possible hardware problem??)
Post by: Boris on December 06, 2003, 10:27:47 AM

Adam,
for SME 5.6 and 6 (kernel 2.4) you probably will be better off with at least 128Mb of RAM.

Title: Re: Lockup at first boot (possible hardware problem??)
Post by: Ray Mitchell on December 06, 2003, 10:37:10 AM

Have you checked to see if your hardware is compatible with Red Hat Linux ?
Check the HCL at the Red Hat web site.
Regs
Ray

Title: Re: Lockup at first boot (possible hardware problem??)
Post by: Adam Richmond-Gordon on December 09, 2003, 05:02:17 PM

Thank you all for your replies. After much messing about, I discovered that the 64MB stick of RAM was dodgy. Had a bad area between 12-14MB... just bought 2x128MB sticks for it. 256 should do, no??

Adam

Title: Re: Lockup at first boot (possible hardware problem??)
Post by: Boris on December 09, 2003, 08:44:46 PM

256Mb is plenty for most purposes.