[SOLVED] requesting assistance with GRUB boot parameters, please

[vc]

I am encountering two difficulties with installation of Minime 09 to a Compaq Armada 1750 laptop.  This model has a P2-400 processor, 320MB of RAM, a 10GB hard disk, a CDROM drive, ATI Mach64 video, ES1869 audio, and also has a 3Com 3C589B 10-Base2/10-BaseT card plugged into PCMCIA Slot 0.  Partitioning is as follows:

/dev/hda1 = swap
/dev/hda2 = /
/dev/hda3 = /home


The first difficulty I encountered is that the Minime 09 live CD does not complete the boot process successfully unless the 'Video_SafeMode_FBDevice' entry is selected in the GRUB menu, and F3 is then pressed to include the 'nosmp noscsi' boot options.  With those parameters, the live CD is then able to boot completely and system installation proceeds normally; however, upon rebooting after installation the system is unable to start the X server.

As the GRUB installer that is entered into at the end of the installation process does not include a 'Video_SafeMode_FBDevice' menu selection, it seems therefore that the available boot menu entry must be modified to include not only the 'nosmp noscsi' boot options, but likely some sort of 'nofb' option as well - however, I have been unable to find any information regarding the format of such an option.  I have tried 'nofb', 'noframebuffer', 'vga=normal', 'vga=nofb', 'video=normal', 'video=nofb', and others - all without any success whatsoever.  I have read both of the following:

/usr/src/linux-2.6.26.8.tex4/Documentation/kernel-parameters.txt
/usr/src/linux-2.6.26.8.tex4/Documentation/fb/modedb.txt

Yet neither has any information regarding such a parameter.  I have further attempted to view GRUB-related files directly (in /union/boot/grub/); however, they are no longer in plain ASCII format and so the various GRUB menu options included on the live CD are correspondingly no longer readable.

Could anyone please inform me of the correct boot option parameter required to disable framebuffer usage?


The second difficulty I encountered is that the system fails to recognise the 3C589B network card.  I tried all sorts of commands and procedures; again, all unsuccessfully - until at last I found /sbin/pcmcia-socket-startup, which then enabled the card.  The system was then in turn able to detect eth0 successfully and establish a connection, through which I am posting this topic currently.

Is there a way to include /sbin/pcmcia-socket-startup during the boot process, once the system is installed (assuming a satisfactory resolution of the framebuffer difficulty)?

[Joble]

Not positive but I think the parameter on the current beta is nonfb.  Check the menu.lst entry on the live-cd for the correct parameter?

Edit:  Lousy spelling.

[vc]

Not positive but I think the parameter on the current beta is nonfb.

Hello, Joble.  Unfortunately, though, the 'nonfb' parameter was unsuccessful - as well as 'vga=vesa' and 'video=vesa', also.

Check the menu.lst entry on the live-cd for the correct parameter?

Again, unfortunately, there is no longer any menu.lst file - it apparently has been replaced by gfxmenu instead, which is not an ASCII file, and therefore not readable.

[Joble]

Oh bummer.  Well that's all I got.  Rarely mess with stuff like that.  Sorry.

[vc]

Oh bummer.  Well that's all I got.  Rarely mess with stuff like that.  Sorry.

I do thank you anyway Joble; your kind response was appreciated, nevertheless.

Perhaps I should have posted these questions in the 'Advanced' forum section instead?

[vc]

Well, that didn't work... I booted the machine from the Minime 09 live CD again, and ran cat /proc/cmdline in order to determine what GRUB had passed to the kernel; then I re-installed again and amended the GRUB install menu entry to include the same options parameters - yet, still the install reboot was unsuccessful, as it too failed to start the X server.

Oh well.  On a somewhat more encouraging note, however, I did attempt booting the 2010 beta1 CD - and it does indeed boot successfully on that machine!  Unfortunately though, KDE4 is simply far too much of a burden upon an old Mach64 video device - it got as far as displaying the initial upper-left-corner 'white rectangle', and died at that point (freezing the entire system).  Nevertheless, this is still quite encouraging all the same, for when the new Enlightenment 2010 variant is released I feel more confident that it may succeeed on this machine?  We shall see!

[Old-Polack]

vc:

Starting the X server has nothing to do with grub. Grub's only job is to find the kernel and initrd image then load then into memory. The fb parameters offered in menu.lst only apply to what is shown on the screen during the boot process, and have no affect on the X server. If you arrive at a boot prompt, the system is working, you just need to load proper drivers for your video card to have the X server load the GUI desktop. The problem is whether such drivers still exist, and are they included with the installation kernel.

Log in as root, type pcc at the prompt, and set up the display using the arrow, Tab, spacebar, and Enter keys to navigate, select and activate your choices. You'll have to experiment a bit with different drivers, and run Test until you find what works.

I don't have any rage/mach64 video cards left, but they have had problems for some time, and a number of driver revisions were made, and have been tried with various newer kernels, not always with great success. My last rage based card was a 32 MB video RAM, All in Wonder, that worked very well with 2.4.x kernels, but drove me nuts with 2.6 .x kernels. The drivers were hit or miss, depending on the specific kernel. When I rebuilt the machine I switched to nVidia cards, just to avoid the hassle with ATI.

[vc]

Thank you, old-polack.  I think what is confusing me is the fact that when I boot the machine from the Minime 09 CD and select the 'Video_SafeMode_FBDevice' GRUB option, it runs fine - the standard KDE3 environment starts up successfully, and everything works normally.  However; every time I attempt to install the same to the hard drive, the reboot continues only to a commandline prompt - and then eventually times out, giving an error message stating that the X server could not be started.  That is why I was thinking that the key to success lay with the kernel boot options being passed by GRUB; I hadn't considered that it may actually be a video driver issue, because of the success in running the CD live - would it not install the same driver?

[Old-Polack]

Thank you, old-polack.  I think what is confusing me is the fact that when I boot the machine from the Minime 09 CD and select the 'Video_SafeMode_FBDevice' GRUB option, it runs fine - the standard KDE3 environment starts up successfully, and everything works normally.  However; every time I attempt to install the same to the hard drive, the reboot continues only to a commandline prompt - and then eventually times out, giving an error message stating that the X server could not be started.  That is why I was thinking that the key to success lay with the kernel boot options being passed by GRUB; I hadn't considered that it may actually be a video driver issue, because of the success in running the CD live - would it not install the same driver?

You would think so, but my nVidia card had three proprietary drivers installed, yet the installer chose the open source "nv" driver for the installation xorg.conf. When I tried to load the proprietary driver, it couldn't find any of the three. I tried reinstalling all three. When I tried to switch to the installed proprietary driver I wanted, it chose the wrong one. I had to uninstall all of the proprietary drivers, then install only the one I wanted, then do the display setup again, before it would actually use the right driver.

This has never happened before. With the 2007 -2009 disks, I manually installed the proper driver while running the liveCD, then the installer used that driver for the installation. We have mostly new scripts for this on the beta, so I assume it will get fixed before the final is released. That's why we're testing. 

[vc]

You are correct, old-polack, and I must admit; those symptoms had me completely fooled.  Thank you for your assistance, in straightening this out!  I now have a functioning KDE3 desktop, I have also changed the Synaptic repository setting over to YouCanToo's KDE3 repo, and am busily updating the new install.

It was a bit worrisome at first, for when I followed your instructions and attempted to install the Mach64 driver, XFdrake kept insisting that it needed to download packages; however, the PCMCIA card problem kept getting in the way until I remembered to run the pcmcia-socket-startup command prior to reconfiguring the video driver.

Indeed; that is now the only problem remaining:  figuring out where to insert that particular command into the startup scripts.  I note during boot that rc.sysinit calls hwdetect, which in turn does detect that a card is plugged in to PCMCIA slot 0 - but then it fails to initiate a socket for same, so eth0 is subsequently not detected and the networking does not start up.  Which script or config file pertains to the hwdetect function, I now wonder?

[Old-Polack]

the PCMCIA card problem kept getting in the way until I remembered to run the pcmcia-socket-startup command prior to reconfiguring the video driver.

Not having a laptop, what is the exact command? Do you have to answer any questions or do any configuration, or just issue the command, and the connection gets made?

[vc]

It requires the opening of a root-mode terminal and running pcmcia-socket-startup - the network then auto-starts successfully, and I exit the terminal.  My hope is to somehow incorporate that command into either rc.sysinit or hwdetect (whichever may be appropriate), so that the card may be enabled prior to the eth0 initialisation step during the boot process.

[Old-Polack]

It requires the opening of a root-mode terminal and running pcmcia-socket-startup - the network then auto-starts successfully, and I exit the terminal.  My hope is to somehow incorporate that command into either rc.sysinit or hwdetect (whichever may be appropriate), so that the card may be enabled prior to the eth0 initialisation step during the boot process.

Try inserting that line in /etc/rc.d/rc.local. You may show a [fail] when eth0 tries to start during the boot up, but when you get to the desktop it should actually be working.

[vc]

Correct, old-polack; that functions precisely as described - thank you!  I edit /etc/rc.d/rc.local to include /sbin/pcmcia-socket-startup as a second line, save the file, check that the executable flag is set, and upon reboot the netcard is initialised and eth0 is up.

Thereby also flagging this thread as [SOLVED], I suppose.  :-)

[Joble]

WewHew!