Arch Linux

nullpointer

Member

From: Canada

Registered: 2005-04-21

Posts: 8

Installation disk vmlinuz not booting

I have an old IBM ThinkPad 390X.  The problem is that when I put the 2009.08 disk in and boot up it just says

Loading vmlinuz.............

then it waits for several minutes and gives this:

isolinux: Disk error 19, AX = 4200, drive 9F

Boot failed: press a key to retry

Retrying produces the same result.  I thought maybe the disk didn't burn correctly so I try it out on 3 other machines and they all work fine.  Then I thought maybe there's something wrong with the hardware so I downloaded a Vector Linux install cd and it worked perfectly fine on the ThinkPad, it installed perfectly and got a full Vector Linux system running perfectly.  The thing is, I would like to put Arch on it.

So now I know there's nothing wrong with the Arch install cd and nothing wrong with the hardware.  My question is:  Is it possible to put Arch on it???  Is there some kind of boot option I can use to make the install cd load correctly?  I can't boot with USB it don't see any option to do that in the CMOS.  What options do I have to install Arch onto it?  Can anyone help?

Thanks!

tomk

Forum Fellow

From: Ireland

Registered: 2004-07-21

Posts: 9,839

Re: Installation disk vmlinuz not booting

Use your Vector install, or any live CD, to do this.

nullpointer

Member

From: Canada

Registered: 2005-04-21

Posts: 8

Re: Installation disk vmlinuz not booting

Hmmm, I followed the instructions to the letter except I used lilo instead of grub but it didn't seem to work... I get

Kernel panic - not syncing: Attempted to kill init!
Pid: 1, comm: kinit Not tainted 2.6.32-ARCH #1
Call Trace:
 [<c12b68e7>] ? panic+0x4d/0xf8
 [<c104404f>] ? do_exit+0x5df/0x6e0
 [<c10f2056>] ? sys_ioctl+0x76/0x90
 [<c1044221>] ? sys_exit+0x11/0x20
 [<c1003ad4>] ? syscall_call+0x7/0xb

Just before the panic it gives:

Root device '302' doesn't exist, attempting to create it
/bin/mknod /dev/root b 3 2
:: Initramfs Completed - control passing to kinit
IP-Config: no devices to configure
Waiting 0 s before mounting root device...
kinit: Unable to mount root fs on device dev(3,2)
kinit: init not found!

Just before it attached the harddisk, udev gave some error, I don't know if it was related.  It scrolled by too fast for me to read.  I think it said something like "Error binding control socket, it seems udevd is already running"

Does anyone know what seems to be the problem?  Is installing from another linux the only way I can get Arch on it?

Still going at it, I'm determined to get Arch onto it.  Since the Arch kernel seemed to panic when booting up, I went and used the Vector kernel and see if what happens.  The vector kernel booted up fine and the Arch system started loading up and a lot of failures from the Arch startup scripts, but at least I got to the command prompt on the Arch system.  The network failed to start up, so that put a damper on my hoping to use pacman to fix something while loaded up in the Arch system.

I'm no kernel expert but I'm guessing that there's something wrong with the Arch kernel that prevents me from boot up.  My new question now is:  Is there a way for me to find out what's wrong with the kernel?  If so, how do I do that and make the appropriate fixes?

Last edited by nullpointer (2010-02-06 00:09:05)

nullpointer

Member

From: Canada

Registered: 2005-04-21

Posts: 8

Re: Installation disk vmlinuz not booting

Okay so the solution was much simpler than I thought.  Just download an older version of the install cd.  I used 2008.03 and Arch installed just fine with it.  Weird how the newer version had trouble over the older version.  All I did after the cd install was run pacman -Sy pacman; pacman -Syu and now everything is good!

zkeng

Member

Registered: 2009-12-08

Posts: 12

Re: Installation disk vmlinuz not booting

I have the same problem on a Compaq Presario 2100 from 2004. It seems like the new arch live cd (2011.08 at least) does not boot well on older hardware. I think this is a bit unlucky, since I often try to introduce my friends to arch by giving their old computers a second life with it.