IBM Thinkpad R50, no boot

[Silhorn]

Hi,
I've got a IBM Thinkpad R50 and Windows XP is running very slow with it, i'm trying out PCLinuxOS on it from a liveUSB.

I have a problem though, I can get as far as the splash screen with the Logo and the 5 large icons underneath. Once all 5 icons are loaded, it just sits there for a long 5 minutes before going to a black screen with a mouse pointer. From this point, it doesn't do anything after....

I have tried to run this LiveUSB from my desktop PC (newer system/hardware) and it started up no problems. Does anyone know how I can fix this?

[T6]

hello and welcome to the forum!

i had a similar problem with a lenovo some years ago, low amounts of ram on a intel integrated video card usually causes this(intel integrated cards uses ram from system to use as video ram)

how much ram do you have?  under 512?

[Silhorn]

Ok i just checked,

It's 256MB ram and integrated video card with 32MB ram

So does this mean PCLinuxOS will not be able to run on the laptop?

[T6]

kde4 version no, never, you need more ram

lxde, gnome, xfce, e17 will probably work very well in it

on your cause i would try to add more ram because 256 mbs of ram on this year is the same as not having ram 

your machine possibly can handle 512 mbs modules so you should be able to have 1 gb of ram, with that ram you can run any desktop

i'm not sure what cpu you have there but if it is more than 1.4ghz all should be ok there

[Hootiegibbon]

Silhorn,

The R50 thinkpad should be good to go with LXDE or XFCE as full environments or one of the mini's if not.

Is there a swap partition avaialable, as it sounds likely that the machine is simply running out of room with 256megs of ram, I am also not convinced that the 32megs of ram is dedicated and not shared on these machines ( the Rseries was always thought of as the 'entry' thinkpad - as they omit some of the standard thinkpad fare - I type this on my great R61i)

as always more information is always handy try booting into runlevel 3 (at the boot menu fress f3for boot options then add a 3 to the end of the line ) then at the login  enter as the user account and type cd /home/<user>/Documents ( I presume there is persistance) then presss enter and then type dmesg > dmesg.txt  then use the poweroff command and reboot on another machine ) and post the contents of the dmesg file at www.pclinuxos.pastebin.com and post the link in tis thread we may be able to find out why you are not reaching a GUI , this is of couse it gets to runlevel 3.

Jase 

[Silhorn]

Thanks for your replies.

I will test difference environments first and see how it goes. Will reply back if any problems 

[Silhorn]

Ok i tried gnome and enlightenment.

The desktops load up fine, I can set up my wifi fine.

But when i try to run 2 large programs at the same time, the system freezes (mouse still works) just like the original problem.
I might try XFCE but i am thinking it will do the same thing?

For the swap file thing, I used LinuxLive USB creator to put the iso automatically on the USB for me.

Also, which option at start up is for persistance? The 2 options at the top of the boot menu both says LiveCD, I just used the first one.

[Hootiegibbon]

Silhorn,

On a machine with limited resources you are going to have to think about which application you need to use. 'large' applications will eat away at RAM leaving it with nowhere to go (the freezing).

Example for your browser think of midori (light/full featured)  or jumanji (verylight/but different) or even w3m if just reading or where flash content is not important, stay away from Firefox or Chromium (both RAM intensive)

Similarly for email usage look at the likes of sylpheed (gtk app) or alpine (ncurses)

On my ThinkPad600 with 128mb, I am able to use w3m, Alpine, and irssi (irc client) whilst running live, and Jumanji, Alpine (my chosen default email client) and weechat on an instalation with  small swap drive

As time moves on and the basic spec of machines gets better (suspiciously in tandem to the requirements for Windows), the 'normal' set of applications hardware requirements increase also, which is why the likes of Firefox would struggle now, where as in the earlier releases would work ok.

Jase

[Silhorn]

Hmm...

Ok so the RAM is what is making my laptop freeze.

So help me understand,

If i use for e.g gimp and firefox at the same time on windows xp, it still loads, just very slow because of my 256 RAM
If i use the same applications on PCLinuxOS, the loading of the second program will freeze the laptop once i used up all the RAM then I have to restart laptop it to get it working again.

So even if for e.g I run PCLinuxOS on my newer pc with 4gb ram. If one day I decide to use a whole bunch of large applications at once eating up all 4gb of ram, it too will freeze so I will still need to restart?

Or does this only happen on a liveCD because i dont have a large enough "swap partition"? So if i install it on the hard drive itself, it won't have a problem?

[Hootiegibbon]

Hmm...

Ok so the RAM is what is making my laptop freeze.

So help me understand,

I will have a go.. its actually the lack of RAM that is (potentially)causing a freeze

If i use for e.g gimp and firefox at the same time on windows xp, it still loads, just very slow because of my 256 RAM
If i use the same applications on PCLinuxOS, the loading of the second program will freeze the laptop once i used up all the RAM then I have to restart laptop it to get it working again.

XP uses a diskspace/ram swapping system in effect similar to a swap partition. you are running the PCLinuxOS iso live without any swap partition it seems.

So even if for e.g I run PCLinuxOS on my newer pc with 4gb ram. If one day I decide to use a whole bunch of large applications at once eating up all 4gb of ram, it too will freeze so I will still need to restart?

The CD version of PCLinxOS if fully uncompressed (run in ram)  will take up about 2.5gigs iirc, so you would have room to breath

Or does this only happen on a liveCD because i dont have a large enough "swap partition"? So if i install it on the hard drive itself, it won't have a problem?

Remember when running live your RAM is all you have to work within it has to take the work , take any downloads, and have room to maneuver for system processes. I can run PCLinuxOS with a browser and irc client on a liveusb in 50megs of ram.

The way Linux handles RAM is much smarter than on the other OS, but if you run out then....

This  is assuming that it is the lack of ram and your chosen apps causing the issue, if it happens again use the magic sysrq keys to unfreeze your computer. to do this locate the whereabouts of the 'SysRq' key (it usually shares print screen and is activated either by the Fn or the Ctrl+Alt keys.

Once located hold down the combination (Fn+SysRq or Ctrl+Alt+Sysrq) to be able to access the magicsyskeys
 
SysRq+R= return keyboard to defaults

When the keyboard is responsive from this use ctrl+alt+f1 (or in fact any Fkey) log in and continue with

SysRq+m = should show the current memory situation in the terminal, if the RAM is not full then its another issue.

SysRq+E= terminate all processes

You can then use dmsg to see what the issue is and post the txt over at thepastebin

On a normal HDD install should not have any issues.

Jase

[pags]

Also remember, when running XP from the HD (installed), the programs are stored on the HD ready to be loaded into memory, temp files get written to the harddrive, and XP has it's pagefile (presumably)...so you have 256+xSWAP (pagefile; >=256 RAM) for running programs.

When running PCLOS from the Live CD (only...not an issue once it's installed to a HD, like XP), the programs are compressed on the CD, and need to be de-compressed on-the-fly (using RAM) when run (using RAM), and any temp files need to be saved into a RAM-disk (using RAM)...so you have 256-xRAM-xRAM-xRAM+0SWAP (<256 RAM) for running programs...

While using the LiveCD, and comparing it to XP, you're giving XP an unfair advantage...
 

[Silhorn]

Oh ok ok,

I will try the magic keys as well as tryout pclinuxos on my pc first and if I like it, I will install to my laptop hard drive.

Thanks everyone for your help