KarinV a écrit :
>
> I trusted in Slackware many years, but now I have to think about
> changing
> the linux-distribution which uses a normal CD loading size to have no
> trubble
> with the hardware.
>

**** happens, and computers - like cars, motorcycles, lawn mowers, hair
dryers - sometimes refuse to work.

1) Check your RAM with memtest86 (on a Knoppix CD, for example). Can you
boot a LiveCD?
2) Open the case, unplug all your PCI cards, rub the contacts with a
rubber (the one people use at school, not the one people use in bed or
elsewhere D) and plug them in again.
3) Run fsck.

If all that fails, I suggest you take your computer to the repair shop.

viel Glück,

Niki Kovacs

On Sat, 22 Sep 2007 02:28:13 -0700, KarinV wrote:

> I wanted to try to install the german KDE-supporting. So I booted my
> Computer with the some days ago installed Slackware12 by Lilo from
> /dev/hdb1 normally. I could login normally, and I became root by
> 'su'.
> Untill this moment the computer worked normally.
> But then I put the 3. Slackware12-Install-CD in my CD-drive (from
> 2005!).
> All what I tried after this moment only 'run' by slowmotion and
> became
> slower and sleeping. I couldn't give the command to mount, I couldn't
> start 'mc' or execute 'ps', nothing worked...
> I tried to shutdown the computer. After writing the command it took
> 3 minutes until the command was to be seen on the monitor. After 20
> minutes
> all was sleeping. Some shutdown-commands I saw on the monitor, but
> not
> the end-commands like 'unmounting devices...' and 'power down'.
> Anytime later i only had the chance to switch off the computer.
> All trying to boot again ended with only one line:
> 'ATI MACH64 BIOS P/N 113-52804-100'
> And under this the ever blinking cursor...
> I tryed to boot without cd-drive and changed the RAM-places,...
> nothing
> helps.
> I can't believe that just in the moment of putting the SlackwareCD
> into the
> drive the processor died. There must be a relation between that CD
> with
> the very new loading size of 32 and my anymore not booting computer.
> Is it possible, that that 3. Slackware12-CD damaged my Bios?
>
> Has anybody an idea, how to reboot the computer now?
> I can't buy a new motherboard, I'm out of work. And I need a computer
> with a
> modern OS to become fit for a new job...
>
> I trusted in Slackware many years, but now I have to think about
> changing
> the linux-distribution which uses a normal CD loading size to have no
> trubble
> with the hardware.
>
> Sorry, if there are mistakes in my English.
>
> Greetings from germany.
>
> Karin
>
Perhaps, this is part of the issue with hal, which should be fixed as
explained here:
http://groups.google.com/group/alt.o...7745e91c549fda

The fact that your system begins to malfunction when the disk is inserted
is pointing to some "auto-notification" feature.

Other WAGS:
1. Your system has less than 256M - (true or false)?

Memory is critical for usability. I have found X working acceptably
with >=256M RAM. Also, setup a swap partition on systems in relation to
their system RAM (For systems with less than a gigabyte of RAM, I
usually set the swap file size as 1.5 times the physical memory
size as a minimum. I am writing this on a system with 256MB, under XFCE,
and with several apps open (pan, firefox, gimp) and it works fine. Top
shows all physical RAM is allocated and swap is used as well (300M of 1.0G)

2. Your system is not using a P6 class processor - (true or false) ?

The default 2.6 kernel is optimized for Pentium Pro architecture. If you
have an older P5 (Pentium), then you could have non-optimal performance.
I am not sure what effect this would have because I have not tested Slack
12 on any system without a P6 class processor. If I were to test, then I
would recompile the kernel (making the one change for P5) in advance.
Even on P6 systems, I had an issue with a network adapter chipset which
was fixed with 2.6.21.7, so I patched the default kernel and have put that
on my other Slack 12 workstations now.

Stick with Slack...

Users of other distributions may be experiencing some of the same
problems. That is why it is good idea to monitor other forums. I
don't think it is necessary to "jump ship," and start using them.
Slackware's approach suits me fine. Fixes for similar problems usually
transfer across distributions.

BTW, It is a good idea to test any new software in advance of "rolling" it
out in general. I put the brakes on further rollouts of Slack 12 on
critical systems after I had some issues with it myself. If you are having
hardware issues, it may be better to stick with 11 until it settles down a
bit. You're right, there have been big changes to X, and for pluggable
devices, etc. These are changes for the better, IMO; that is, when the
hardware cooperates. If you are dealing with out of date hardware, then
EBay is your friend.

Here is one other thing to consider. The Linux kernel itself is still
being fixed and refined. As evidnce, check the changelog from 2.6.21 to
2.6.22. I am glad that bugs are being addressed and fixed by the
community. This is how the open source model is supposed to work, and
change is just a fact of life.

--
Douglas Mayne

On Sat, 22 Sep 2007 02:28:13 -0700, KarinV wrote:

>I wanted to try to install the german KDE-supporting. So I booted my
>Computer with the some days ago installed Slackware12 by Lilo from
>/dev/hdb1 normally. I could login normally, and I became root by
>'su'.
>Untill this moment the computer worked normally.
>But then I put the 3. Slackware12-Install-CD in my CD-drive (from
>2005!).
>All what I tried after this moment only 'run' by slowmotion and
>became
>slower and sleeping. I couldn't give the command to mount, I couldn't
>start 'mc' or execute 'ps', nothing worked...
>I tried to shutdown the computer. After writing the command it took
>3 minutes until the command was to be seen on the monitor. After 20
>minutes
>all was sleeping. Some shutdown-commands I saw on the monitor, but
>not
>the end-commands like 'unmounting devices...' and 'power down'.
>Anytime later i only had the chance to switch off the computer.
>All trying to boot again ended with only one line:
>'ATI MACH64 BIOS P/N 113-52804-100'
>And under this the ever blinking cursor...
>I tryed to boot without cd-drive and changed the RAM-places,...
>nothing
>helps.
>I can't believe that just in the moment of putting the SlackwareCD
>into the
>drive the processor died. There must be a relation between that CD
>with
>the very new loading size of 32 and my anymore not booting computer.
>Is it possible, that that 3. Slackware12-CD damaged my Bios?

I would like to add to what the other posters allreaddy wrote in this
thread that, as far as I know, of the 3 cd's, only the first is
bootable, so '-boot-load-size 32' has no relevance for what disk 3
does, or how it behaves.



Wish you luck, and hope your problem will be solved quickly!
Manuel

On Sat, 22 Sep 2007 08:26:26 -0600, Douglas Mayne wrote:

> Memory is critical for usability. I have found X working acceptably
> with >=256M RAM.

That statement constitutes a libel on X....

I've run recent versions of X that work acceptably in about 32 Mb RAM. In
40 Mb I've had jwm going pretty damn quick.

The NetBSD release notes claim that X requires at least 8 Mb to run and 16
Mb for decent peformance....

Your statement is, however, definitely true for X with huge desktop
environments like KDE (or Gnome, or XFCE).

People with only 128 Mb should be quite happy with IceWM, those with less
should consider fluxbox and smaller.

There's also the fact that the amount of video RAM allocated may make a
large difference.

On Sat, 22 Sep 2007 17:24:29 +0000, Mark South wrote:

> The NetBSD release notes claim that X requires at least 8 Mb to run and
> 16 Mb for decent peformance....

NetBSD-1.6.2 running twm on a P75, 16 MB is intolerably slow, regardless
of their claims.

OTOH, running tip in console mode that configuration works well enough.

On Sat, 22 Sep 2007 18:15:46 +0000, Dave Uhring wrote:

> On Sat, 22 Sep 2007 17:24:29 +0000, Mark South wrote:
>
>> The NetBSD release notes claim that X requires at least 8 Mb to run and
>> 16 Mb for decent performance....
>
> NetBSD-1.6.2 running twm on a P75, 16 MB is intolerably slow, regardless
> of their claims.

I last had 1.6.2 on a 64 Mb P133. It was pretty quick, using fvwm.

> OTOH, running tip in console mode that configuration works well enough.

Agreed. But I think my original point was that X != KDE.

On Sat, 22 Sep 2007 20:24:37 +0000, Mark South wrote:
> On Sat, 22 Sep 2007 18:15:46 +0000, Dave Uhring wrote:

>> OTOH, running tip in console mode that configuration works well enough.
>
> Agreed. But I think my original point was that X != KDE.

Full agreement there.

On Sat, 22 Sep 2007 17:24:29 +0000, Mark South wrote:

> On Sat, 22 Sep 2007 08:26:26 -0600, Douglas Mayne wrote:
>
>> Memory is critical for usability. I have found X working acceptably
>> with >=256M RAM.
>
> That statement constitutes a libel on X....
>

>
You're right, of course. X is not the same as the window manager which
runs on top (twm, blackbox, xfce, gnome, kde, etc.) My answer was sloppy,
but no _malice_ was intended

OT: Here are some rough statistics from a system which I put together from
parts from EBay:

Motherboard: DFI CM33-TL
CPU: P3 866MHz, 256kB cache
Memory: 2 x 128M = 256M
Disk: Spare 40G IDE
Sound, network, video, on motherboard.

Usability: OK - YMMV

Because I was surprised that swap usage was so high, I did a rough
check just now using "top." By exiting all firefox windows, I reclaimed
about 200M of swap and about 100M of physical RAM. Then by exiting the
gimp top reports this usage.

top - 16:03:35 up 2 days, 8:55, 5 users, load average: 0.51, 0.35, 0.37
Tasks: 69 total, 1 running, 68 sleeping, 0 stopped, 0 zombie
Cpu(s): 2.6%us, 0.5%sy, 0.0%ni, 90.3%id, 6.5%wa, 0.0%hi, 0.0%si, 0.0%st
Mem: 247200k total, 138264k used, 108936k free, 48000k buffers
Swap: 1469936k total, 75516k used, 1394420k free, 36688k cached

PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND
3516 root 15 0 42640 14m 3180 S 1.8 6.1 91:21.46 X
3622 doug 15 0 21348 5212 3584 S 0.8 2.1 0:05.72 Terminal
3711 doug 15 0 90944 18m 5388 S 0.3 7.8 7:23.36 pan
6290 doug 15 0 2304 1116 876 R 0.3 0.5 0:01.21 top
1 root 15 0 768 72 52 S 0.0 0.0 0:05.43 init

The baseline usage of 138M seems to show that systems with 128M will have
performance issues when going beyond the simple command line interface
(i.e. with X and a windows manager running.) But, on second thought, the
buffer usage on my system may be higher than normal because I am using a
custom, large initrd which remains permanently allocated after boot.
Someone else may be able to offer a better baseline comparison from a more
standard Slackware 12 setup. I would be surprised if the memory
requirement was much less than 256MB, especially when firefox is running.
IME, 256M appears to be a sweet spot for old hardware running as a
personal workstation. YMMV.

--
Douglas Mayne

The first Cd wasn't bootable normally, only with the help of smbootmgr-
floppy, written under DOS. With the same cd-drive I couldt install
Slackware10 and WinXP without any booting problems of a Cd.
Slackware12 was already insatlled, and I 'only' wanted to add
something from the 3. Slackware12-Cd under console, not under X or
KDE.
Ofcourse I already tried to unplug and replug all, nothing helped.

Now I can't do anything with that computer,becouse nothing works, only
the first line of Bios will be written and after it nothing goes. The
computer isn't able to read anything, no harddisk, no floppy, no Cd,
also not other Cd, which some days before booted without any
floppyhelp...
512 MB RAM is ok, CMOS isn't empty...
Until I put the 3. Slackware12-Cd into the drive all was working. Only
the not normal booting
Slackware12-Cds needed the help of the special DOS-Floppy. But this
problem was solved,
before this new problem came. And that came with that 3. Slackware12-
CD.
May be there was an automounting also under console, but I don't
understand, that just in this moment all the hardware became unable to
work for ever like it seems and nothing helps to reboot.
The same tastatur and mouse for example are working on another
computer, but I can write a lot of commands with the tastatur for the
nomore booting computer, but nothing will be executed and no command
is to be seen on the monitor, only the above mentioned first line of
the Bios and the blinking cursor.
What did the SlackwareCd made? It isn't a 'normal hardwareproblem, it
was coused by that SlackwareCD.
There is no possibillity to try to flash the Bios or so, because no
floppy or other drive or device will work with this computer. Is there
anything other, a special combination like ctrl+alt+del or so?

K.

KarinV wrote:
> I wanted to try to install the german KDE-supporting. So I booted my
> Computer with the some days ago installed Slackware12 by Lilo from
> /dev/hdb1 normally. I could login normally, and I became root by
> 'su'.
> Untill this moment the computer worked normally.
> But then I put the 3. Slackware12-Install-CD in my CD-drive (from
> 2005!).
> All what I tried after this moment only 'run' by slowmotion and
> became
> slower and sleeping. I couldn't give the command to mount, I couldn't
> start 'mc' or execute 'ps', nothing worked...
> I tried to shutdown the computer. After writing the command it took
> 3 minutes until the command was to be seen on the monitor. After 20
> minutes
> all was sleeping. Some shutdown-commands I saw on the monitor, but
> not
> the end-commands like 'unmounting devices...' and 'power down'.
> Anytime later i only had the chance to switch off the computer.
> All trying to boot again ended with only one line:
> 'ATI MACH64 BIOS P/N 113-52804-100'
> And under this the ever blinking cursor...

This must be a hardware problem.
BTW, what is _ever_ in this case? Did you allow for a several
minutes time out while the BIOS tries to detect the connected
disks?
If the computer continues after a -possible several minutes
long- time out and you can access the BIOS setup, then you
should experiment with disabling the IDE channels. Start
with only the second channel disabled.

> I tryed to boot without cd-drive and changed the RAM-places,...
> nothing helps.

Try to remove all hardware that is not needed to boot one by one:
sound card and network card if those are not integrated on the MB.

If you have several RAM modules remove all but one.
If that doesn't make difference than replace the RAM module you kept
with one of the others.

As the last component you could even remove the hard disk. Of course
you cannot boot without the hard disk, but at least you should be
able to access the BIOS setup with only a working display and a
keyboard.

If nothing changes by removing components the error must be in
the remaining hardware: processor, MB, video card if not integrated
on the MB.

> I can't believe that just in the moment of putting the SlackwareCD
> into the drive the processor died.

It's not unthinkable that errors that are already present for some
time only show up just at the moment that you start using the
defective component.
A defective CD drive is of course what first comes in mind, but
-assuming that the CD drive is connected to the secondary IDE bus,
without other drives on that bus- it could as likely be any chip on
the MB that is related to the secundary IDE bus.
By trying to boot with the CD drive removed you excluded the CD drive
as the cause of the problem.

> There must be a relation between that CD with
> the very new loading size of 32 and my anymore not booting computer.
> Is it possible, that that 3. Slackware12-CD damaged my Bios?

It's impossible, by all practical means.
First -as mentioned by others already- disk 3 is not bootable and in
this case it is absolutely not relevant how the boot code on disk 1
is organized.
I theory, if you are running an OS with automount _and_ autorun
functionality, very bad things can happen by just loading a CD that
contains malware; such as flashing your BIOS for instance. And that
is why I said: "It's impossible, by all practical means." I don't
think there is any reason to be that paranoia in this case.

> Has anybody an idea, how to reboot the computer now?
> I can't buy a new motherboard, I'm out of work. And I need a computer
> with a modern OS to become fit for a new job...

You can try to locate the error by removing "unneeded" components one by
one. Instead of removing things one by one you could remove everything
at once and, if that solves the problem, put things back one by one.
This last approach could save some time.
If you happen to have spare parts -or if you can borrow components
from an other computer- you could replace components in order to locate
the error.
But in the end, if it _is_ an error on the motherboard, and disabling
components in the BIOS setup is not possible -or if that doesn't solve
anything-, then replacing the motherboard will be the only solution.


Regards,

Kees.

--
Kees Theunissen.

On Sat, 22 Sep 2007 15:51:13 -0700, KarinV wrote:

>The first Cd wasn't bootable normally, only with the help of smbootmgr-
>floppy, written under DOS. With the same cd-drive I couldt install
>Slackware10 and WinXP without any booting problems of a Cd.
>Slackware12 was already insatlled, and I 'only' wanted to add
>something from the 3. Slackware12-Cd under console, not under X or
>KDE.
>Ofcourse I already tried to unplug and replug all, nothing helped.
>
>Now I can't do anything with that computer,becouse nothing works, only
>the first line of Bios will be written and after it nothing goes. The
>computer isn't able to read anything, no harddisk, no floppy, no Cd,
>also not other Cd, which some days before booted without any
>floppyhelp...
>512 MB RAM is ok, CMOS isn't empty...
>Until I put the 3. Slackware12-Cd into the drive all was working. Only
>the not normal booting
>Slackware12-Cds needed the help of the special DOS-Floppy. But this
>problem was solved,
>before this new problem came. And that came with that 3. Slackware12-
>CD.

The cd itself has nothing to do with it, unless you've downloaded it
from un untrusted source (very unlikely, I think).

Kees Theunissen has wrote a good step-by-stap plan to isolate the
problem in message news:46f5c246$0$236$e4fe514c@news.xs4all.nl

A defective component, even if it's not anything critical, like
motherboard or cpu CAN make system unbootable.

I experienced years ago that suddenly machine stopped working, and
after trying many things I ended up removing components.

You won't believe what the problem was: a defective dial-up modem...

Don't panic, remove and/or disconnect things which are not directly
needed, as discribed by others.

Isolate the problem by excluding any possible course. This should
leave you with the solution.

>May be there was an automounting also under console, but I don't
>understand, that just in this moment all the hardware became unable to
>work for ever like it seems and nothing helps to reboot.
>The same tastatur and mouse for example are working on another
>computer, but I can write a lot of commands with the tastatur for the
>nomore booting computer, but nothing will be executed and no command
>is to be seen on the monitor, only the above mentioned first line of
>the Bios and the blinking cursor.
>What did the SlackwareCd made? It isn't a 'normal hardwareproblem, it
>was coused by that SlackwareCD.
>There is no possibillity to try to flash the Bios or so, because no
>floppy or other drive or device will work with this computer. Is there
>anything other, a special combination like ctrl+alt+del or so?
>
>K.

Good luck, don't panic!
Manuel

KarinV wrote:
> Now I can't do anything with that computer,becouse nothing works, only
> the first line of Bios will be written and after it nothing goes.

Are you not even able to get into CMOS setup?

> The computer isn't able to read anything, no harddisk, no floppy, no Cd,
> also not other Cd, which some days before booted without any
> floppyhelp...

The fact that you needed a floppy to boot the slackware 12 installation CD
on your old machine shouldn't mean that you need a floppy to boot CDs that
ahve booted before. Do you really mean that since installing Slackware 12
you were no longer able to boot from your old CDs which had previously
worked?

> 512 MB RAM is ok, CMOS isn't empty...

By this I guess that you are able to get into your CMOS setup?

> Until I put the 3. Slackware12-Cd into the drive all was working.

This was most likely a coincidence only. Inserting or even mounting a CD
would not be able to break anything.

> What did the SlackwareCd made? It isn't a 'normal hardwareproblem, it
> was coused by that SlackwareCD.

There is nothing that the CD in itself can have done. There are a few
commands that would have the potential to make a machine unbootable. Those
commands would be something like loading the nvram module and then
overwrite your CMOS contents in /dev/nvram. However, no such thing is done
by inserting or mounting a CD.

> There is no possibillity to try to flash the Bios or so, because no
> floppy or other drive or device will work with this computer.

I don't think that you have broken your BIOS so you probably don't need to
reflash it.

Things to suspect that could cause a machine not to boot:

1) A broken drive on the IDE channel

2) A broken card on the PCI bus

3) A broken power supply

4) A broken RAM

5) A broken motherboard

It is hard to say which of the above would be more likely broken than
anything else, but the list is ordered in how easy things are to remove or
replace. As you are suspecting that your CD has something to do with your
problems a good place to start might be to disconnect the CD-drive to see
if that would make the machine capable of bootring from HD again.

If that doesn't help you can see if it helps to remove all drives. With
that configuration you will not be able to boot, but at least you might
get some error message about missing boot media.

Next step would be to remove all cards but the graphics card. Will it boot
now?

As the last message you see is from your graphics card it could also be
worth trying to repace it if you have another card laying around.

Follow the steps above, but replacing the motherboard means a lot of work
so before coming to that step you might want to consider replacing the
entire computer.

regards Henrik
--
The address in the header is only to prevent spam. My real address is:
hc1(at)poolhem.se Examples of addresses which go to spammers:
root@localhost postmaster@localhost

On Sat, 22 Sep 2007 16:24:03 -0600, Douglas Mayne wrote:

> On Sat, 22 Sep 2007 17:24:29 +0000, Mark South wrote:
>
>> On Sat, 22 Sep 2007 08:26:26 -0600, Douglas Mayne wrote:
>>
>>> Memory is critical for usability. I have found X working acceptably
>>> with >=256M RAM.
>>
>> That statement constitutes a libel on X....
>>
>
>>
> You're right, of course. X is not the same as the window manager which
> runs on top (twm, blackbox, xfce, gnome, kde, etc.) My answer was sloppy,
> but no _malice_ was intended

;-)

> OT: Here are some rough statistics from a system which I put together from
> parts from EBay:
>
> Motherboard: DFI CM33-TL
> CPU: P3 866MHz, 256kB cache
> Memory: 2 x 128M = 256M
> Disk: Spare 40G IDE
> Sound, network, video, on motherboard.
>
> Usability: OK - YMMV

That's like (amazingly similar to, actually) the kind of system I like to
test Linux distros on. Performing well on such a setup is indicative of
lack of the resource-hog property.

> Because I was surprised that swap usage was so high, I did a rough check
> just now using "top." By exiting all firefox windows, I reclaimed about
> 200M of swap and about 100M of physical RAM....

It's very system dependent, like how FF is set to cache and so on.

> The baseline usage of 138M seems to show that systems with 128M will
> have performance issues when going beyond the simple command line
> interface (i.e. with X and a windows manager running.)

To tell for sure, you have to look at top right after a clean boot.
Remember that a lot of stuff gets left in swap, for example if you have an
instance of Konqueror set to preload at KDE start.

Also, are you running a lot of services?

> But, on second
> thought, the buffer usage on my system may be higher than normal because
> I am using a custom, large initrd which remains permanently allocated
> after boot. Someone else may be able to offer a better baseline
> comparison from a more standard Slackware 12 setup. I would be surprised
> if the memory requirement was much less than 256MB, especially when
> firefox is running.

Paul of Absolute Linux (trimmed Slackware 12 all-on-one-CD distro) has
claimed to see a memory footprint of 34 to 40 Mb from a clean boot, and
that's with some services running.

My own testing bears this out, i.e., Absolute runs quite adequately on a
PII 300 with 128 Mb. Slackware, and Debian for that matter, can be
installed to run well in such an amount of RAM.

> IME, 256M appears to be a sweet spot for old
> hardware running as a personal workstation. YMMV.

I still think of anything that doesn't run well in 256 Mb as a memory hog.
(You know who you are :-) Slack 12 and KDE seem perfectly happy on my
turn-of-the-century P3 600
with 384 Mb.

KarinV wrote:

> 512 MB RAM is ok, CMOS isn't empty...
> Until I put the 3. Slackware12-Cd into the drive all was working. Only
> the not normal booting
> Slackware12-Cds needed the help of the special DOS-Floppy. But this
> problem was solved,
> before this new problem came. And that came with that 3. Slackware12-
> CD.
Hello!
Language, language!!!
Read the whole thread and found that in few instances you mention a
'non-perfect' behaviour of hardware.
So this should be a starting point.
Disconnect _all_ helper things - meaning CD; HD; cards - modem,
ethernet, sound...whatever; and remove memory strips leaving only one in
and let the stripped box revive from the 'miserable' old fashioned
floppy. _You_ told us that it works!
It does not matter what kind MS-DOS; DR-DOS or Tomsrtbt(linux).
For this you need the basic helper 'Video' card. Do you have a
replacement? 640x480 256 colors is perfect in this case.
If it revives, now play Sherlock Holmes.
Slowly interogate each suspect and the guilty one will appear.
I don't envy you, too many times "It worked before!!" computers land on
my desk and give me the "sh**s". And too many times the final solution
is 'SS'= Simple Stupid.

Good luck and have fun.

Stanislaw
Slack 12 user from Ulladulla.