LiveCD hangs at UDEV

[ln2009]

Hi,

I've used PClos 2009 for a while but am still a newbie on this stuff, so bear with me.  I tried booting the latest 2011 KDE liveCD on my desktop, but it hangs when it reaches UDEV.  However, it works on my laptop.  Also tried the Openbox version with the same result.  I tried the different boot options, on some it hangs with a blank screen, others it hangs with a corrupted screen.  I tried the CTRL-ALT-F7 I read about in another post, but nothing happens, system is locked.

Interestingly, The "Full Monty" version loads up OK.  When it gets to UDEV a bunch of stuff scrolls on the screen, something like "UDEV[578]: SYSFS{} will be removed in a future UDEV version...".   Then the boot continues and everything runs OK.

Thanks for any help on this.

[LSeraphim]

From what I have read elsewhere there are a number of ways to make thing happen again.
Here is one of the things I read from Linuxquestions.org
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/linux-hardware-18/any-guesses-as-to-when-%60%60starting-udev-hang-may-get-fixed-583871/

I have seen elsewhere that resetting the pool data in bios can help, and try disabling the onboard sound. My money would be on disabling the AHCI for the IDE or SATA drive until after install. I had a similar issue and went away when I changed my HDD settings. I also see many posts around teh interwebs suggesting that this may be the way to go, just choose "no local apic" to get rolling again.

[ln2009]

I tried "no local apic" and "no acpi".  Did not change anything.  Still hung at UDEV to either a blank screen or a corrupted screen.  Thanks for the suggestion, tho.

[melodie]

I tried "no local apic" and "no acpi".  Did not change anything.  Still hung at UDEV to either a blank screen or a corrupted screen.  Thanks for the suggestion, tho.

Hi,

What is the brand and model of this machine ? If you start the live cd without plymouth running, what are the exact last 3 to 5 message lines that you get just before it hangs ?

[ln2009]

This is a homemade PC with an AMD Athlon 64 X2 on a K8M800 Biostar MB w/2G ram.  Pardon my ignorance, but I don't know what running w/o Plymouth means.  What is Plymouth?

Thanks for your looking into this.

[melodie]

Hi,

http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/Plymouth

an example here : http://www.pclinuxos.com/forum/index.php/topic,96553.msg820968.html#msg820968

If you choose one of the alternate boot options you can start the Live CD in text mode only, which makes it easier to look at what point of the boot it hangs and what the messages just before the hang say. This can help find out what goes wrong.

[JNibski]

VIDEO CARD make and model (in the problem machine)?......if no card -whats the video chipset?   do this{in the 2009} type in lspci in a terminal - and cut and paste the results here....thank you.

My guess= if THIS is your motherboard, then it has the "integrated UNICHROME" video chip, and there has been some issues with PLYMOUTH with that particular onboard graphics drivers...

You should have an 8x AGP slot, and you could pick up an old AGP card for $5 or so....I've been using old ATI 128 rage pro with success for clients {for Basic video usage-if you are not a 'GAMER"} otherwise if you play games, a more expensive,  AGP card is required ... Such as THIS ONE that works good with PCLOS.    If you just want to "test" to see if pclos live cd works, another aspect holding you back - might be your CDPLAYER....?

One step at a time, and maybe you have an AGP card laying around to test with....

JN.

[pinoc]

The UDEV-messages during boot are harmless. You seem to have some hardware component for which the necessary driver is not available on one of the PCLinuxOS live-CDs. In contrast, the FullMonty, a PCLinuxOS live-DVD boots up fine because it has virtually all drivers available in the repo already preinstalled on the DVD and thus available to your system. Maybe you have a RAID system or some other unconventional hardware component? But that doesn't matter, cause if the FullMonty boots up fine then install it and you are set.
-p.

[JNibski]

Still hung at UDEV to either a blank screen or a corrupted screen.

.... have patience - this is due to the unichrome video driver.....{sometimes} wait as long as 10 minutes {it is thinking} and it will boot up to the login eventually....

By corrupted do you mean the screen turns a static PINK-GREEN and GRAY?

Try LXDE, and it will do the same....the speed of your CD player determines the LIVE CD boot speed , and is much SLOWER than if installed on a HARD DRIVE....

This is all we can help -without more info.

JN.

[ln2009]

VIDEO CARD make and model (in the problem machine)?......if no card -whats the video chipset?   do this{in the 2009} type in lspci in a terminal - and cut and paste the results here....thank you.

My guess= if THIS is your motherboard, then it has the "integrated UNICHROME" video chip, and there has been some issues with PLYMOUTH with that particular onboard graphics drivers...

You should have an 8x AGP slot, and you could pick up an old AGP card for $5 or so....I've been using old ATI 128 rage pro with success for clients {for Basic video usage-if you are not a 'GAMER"} otherwise if you play games, a more expensive,  AGP card is required ... Such as THIS ONE that works good with PCLOS.    If you just want to "test" to see if pclos live cd works, another aspect holding you back - might be your CDPLAYER....?

One step at a time, and maybe you have an AGP card laying around to test with....

Here are the results for "lspci"
sh-4.1# lspci
00:00.0 Host bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. K8M800 Host Bridge
00:00.1 Host bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. K8M800 Host Bridge
00:00.2 Host bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. K8M800 Host Bridge
00:00.3 Host bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. K8M800 Host Bridge
00:00.4 Host bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. K8M800 Host Bridge
00:00.7 Host bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. K8M800 Host Bridge
00:01.0 PCI bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT8237 PCI bridge [K8T800/K8T890 South]
00:0f.0 IDE interface: VIA Technologies, Inc. VIA VT6420 SATA RAID Controller (rev 80)
00:0f.1 IDE interface: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82C586A/B/VT82C686/A/B/VT823x/A/C PIPC Bus Master IDE (rev 06)
00:10.0 USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82xxxxx UHCI USB 1.1 Controller (rev 81)
00:10.1 USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82xxxxx UHCI USB 1.1 Controller (rev 81)
00:10.2 USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82xxxxx UHCI USB 1.1 Controller (rev 81)
00:10.3 USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82xxxxx UHCI USB 1.1 Controller (rev 81)
00:10.4 USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. USB 2.0 (rev 86)
00:11.0 ISA bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT8237 ISA bridge [KT600/K8T800/K8T890 South]
00:11.5 Multimedia audio controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT8233/A/8235/8237 AC97 Audio Controller (rev 60)
00:12.0 Ethernet controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT6102 [Rhine-II] (rev 78)
00:18.0 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] HyperTransport Technology Configuration
00:18.1 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] Address Map
00:18.2 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] DRAM Controller
00:18.3 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] Miscellaneous Control
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. K8M800/K8N800/K8N800A [S3 UniChrome Pro] (rev 01)
sh-4.1#

So it looks like I do have the UniChrome graphics chip.  I'd prefer not to add a new graphics card at this time.  Is there anything I can do in the boot process?  The "Full Monty" runs but can't load into the 2 G Ram that I have, so it had to run from CD and is slow.  The 2010 Gnome version of PCLinuxOS as well as Puppy Linux both run OK from the LiveCD and load into Ram, so I've been using those for now.

[ln2009]

Still hung at UDEV to either a blank screen or a corrupted screen.

.... have patience - this is due to the unichrome video driver.....{sometimes} wait as long as 10 minutes {it is thinking} and it will boot up to the login eventually....

By corrupted do you mean the screen turns a static PINK-GREEN and GRAY?

I waited for 1/2 hour, but nothing happens.  When I tried the "Safe Boot" from the liveCD, the screen gets video corruption which is like pink horizontal lines with some blue vertical banding mixed in.  Pretty sure this is that problem you mentioned with the Unichrome chip.

[melodie]

Hi,

Do you want to give a try with Openbox Bonsai ? It's less than 265MB, and if it happens to let you boot until the desktop is reached and install it, you could install any desktop you want on top of it after. You can also try safe video VESA boot stanza, if the unichrome driver is not well used by your Graphic Card.

Otherwise I think also that it is a very bad quality graphic card and that you should add another one if you can.



JNibski : how do our graphic drivers work now with old fashioned nvidia cards ? It seems to me that the nv generic driver does a better job than it used to ?

[JNibski]

...Hi melodie.......    I am not at home right now to give you the exact models/specs, but will post the ones that seem to work , and the ones that are 'iffy' .....there were a few that did'nt get recognized but were 'off' brand models with a Nvidia chipset...even had a few MATROX work and not work...

The ATI rage 128 AGP cards work well!...{and there were millions of those made...}

....keep in mind - they are just for routine, basic everyday viewing, and not too much 'GAMING'... i even have set them up on large LCD screens for visually handicapped people...

There are lots of motherboards with ONBOARD unichrome graphics - and the addition of a video card CAN give NEW LIFE to them for many potential PCLOS users........
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
.OK- in2009,    have you checked your DVD/cd player?   the FULL MONTE is a dvd I think, and the others are cd's........

If you get any pclos to "work"  then go to PCC> hardware> configure video card>and see if your monitor, and graphic card is correct, and recognized properly.......here you can make the corrections, if any, and see if it makes any diff.

-might be an xorg thing....FROM the unichrome site :  VT3108:
"The Unichrome Pro, later renamed Unichrome Pro B. Found on K8M800 and K8N800."

You might TRY the 'OPENCHROME' driver-listed under 'XORG'...in the "configure video card" section -hardware-pcc.....

If none of that works....

The only other thing i can suggest, is to hit the escape key while the cd is starting to read the TEXT output of/at the hang.

-check the burn quality of the cd's - might be a fault.   if you want to use windows to check, read this .
If you want to use LINUX pclos to check : read this.

Try LXDE or Openbox, too....and consider melodie's expert advice posted above......

post back here....

JN.

[melodie]

Hi,

I would also suggest booting from a Live USB stick. Recently, Just18 have made available an image for floppy, (from plop boot manager I think) that allows booting from usb on machines where the feature is not available. I have downloaded it, and made it also available on my web space, here. He said he could also make it available for CD. That would be interesting for saving CD's : one for booting all USB sticks, and no more CD's burned after, and also it's very little to load, compared to a full CD : I had tried this kind of method with the distribution Slax, long ago. That was working very well, even much better than have the Slax CD started, on that machine that was low in specs.

[ln2009]

Do you want to give a try with Openbox Bonsai ? It's less than 265MB, and if it happens to let you boot until the desktop is reached and install it, you could install any desktop you want on top of it after. You can also try safe video VESA boot stanza, if the unichrome driver is not well used by your Graphic Card.

I've been using PuppyLinux and the 2010 Gnome version of PClinuxOS which both work very well.

I tried the safe video VESA boot, but the screen ends up corrupted after UDEV and the system is locked.

Thanks for your efforts.