Old P3 1GHz/1GiB System won't even boot archlinux 2015.09.01

bcw142 · 2015-09-20 13:15:18

Something seems odd on my Old P3 1GHz/1GiB System won't even boot archlinux 2015.09.01 it just hangs with 'Booting the kernel.' as the last message. Oddly I'm writing this with the newest archbang on that system, but archbang won't install either. Archbang seems to need 2G of ram to install and just kernel panics (flasing keyboard LEDs and halted), but the Live setup does boot. Because I couldn't get into the archbang forums, I download the newest archlinux (which archbang is based off) and tried that just to hang on trying to get to the boot enviroment. The Hardware Information does work and shows an ASUSTek CUST-FX Rev 1.xx motherboard with VESA 3 and 16M video ram. I notice nothing about what to do about this in the normal https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Beginners'_guide but there is the hint of Boot parameters which might be the fix and reason why archbang would boot and archlinux wouldn't. I'll blindly try some starting with arch=i686 when I figure out how to add boot parameters. Does anyone have a clue why I can boot the Live archbang and not archlinux?

Slithery · 2015-09-20 13:32:48

Which processor do you have exactly?

Edit - Welcome to the forums

Last edited by Slithery (2015-09-20 13:33:23)

bcw142 · 2015-09-20 16:34:03

I think this one is likely coppermine (P3 CPU), but that matters little. My Ubuntu instincts kicked in and I held the left shift during my next boot panic time and got a prompt (root@archiso ~#). From there I could do something, tried the pacstrap /mnt base (after mounting the partition I wanted on /mnt) and got ERROR: Failed to install packages to new root. So I booted archbang back up and used gparted to reformat to ext4 and then pacstrap /mnt base worked fine (found the command from install.txt). For people with the same issue:
Hold down the left shift on the keyboard and hit enter (to 'Boot Arch Linux'). It will take some time and a lot of text will scroll, but keep holding left shift to make sure, after a while a 'root@archiso ~#' prompt will appear. From there an 'ls' (enter) will show only install.txt. You are in a Live boot setup so vi (vim) or nano will work to show you the install.txt and let you look around (nano install.txt [enter]). In this setup ALT-F1 is the first terminal which you start on, ALT-F2 will get you a new prompt so you can hit ALT-F1 and see the original with it's install.txt and then enter what you need at the ALT-F2 prompt. There should be prompts for ALT-F1 thru F6 generally. Using that I installed the main arch base. First you need to mount your linux partition on /mnt (in my case: mount /dev/sda6 /mnt). Then 'pacstrap /mnt/base' (enter) will install the arch linux base showing all progress. 'genfstab -p /mnt >> /mnt/etc/fstab' (enter) will create the base /etc/fstab which you might want to edit (/mnt/etc/fstab) and add partitions to (/windows and /dos in my case). Then the install.txt failed me and I opened the Beginners'_guide page on another system and used that. 'arch-chroot /mnt' (enter) puts you in the now active system. I did a 'mount -a' to get my other partitions mounted at that point. Got that setup till including grub-mkconfig, then changed root password (passwd), closed out the other terminals I opened, did 'umount -R /mnt' in the original terminal followed by 'reboot' and got grub-rescue>.
Used UBCD5.11 MRBWork to setup the old bootblock and get to windows and typed this.
So what can people here suggest to get archlinux up? I have a working MSDOS6.22 and XP Pro again, tried my old loadlin but have the wrong kernel and possibly other issues. My archlinux is now at /dev/sda6 in my case and that is possibly out of the normal BIOS boot range (loadlin has worked for this in the distant past for me). I guess Grub2 or syslinux might be able to work with the right setup. Right now I haven't found a way to get archlinux to boot again, but that's likely a matter of time and experimentation.

bcw142 · 2015-09-21 01:11:08

Lost the dos & windows boot, but can get the grub-rescue prompt and syslinux boot: prompt. Found that boot: /boot/vmlinuz-linux root=/dev/sda6 rw initrd=/boot/initramfs-linux.img will make it boot. I copied vmlinuz-linux and initramfs-linux.img to the /dev/sda1 dos area pointed to by the MRB (/boot or when running under linux /dos/boot) and syslinux, allowing it to boot. My system is so old it has a floppy disk that can boot the dos normally including cdrom.
So, now I'm digging in to syslinux to figure out how to make it work normally (without all that typing), and then boot Dos and Windows as well. I see ssh is a battle as well with archlinux, loading openssh doesn't make for a working sshd! I prefer to be able to move around working on it using ssh to connect and America/New_York doesn't seem to set me to EDT either! Still I have to get ssylinux booting correctly first before the other two are of much importance.

Last edited by bcw142 (2015-09-22 14:19:21)

Arch Linux

#1 2015-09-20 13:15:18

Old P3 1GHz/1GiB System won't even boot archlinux 2015.09.01

#2 2015-09-20 13:32:48

Re: Old P3 1GHz/1GiB System won't even boot archlinux 2015.09.01

#3 2015-09-20 16:34:03

Re: Old P3 1GHz/1GiB System won't even boot archlinux 2015.09.01

#4 2015-09-21 01:11:08

Re: Old P3 1GHz/1GiB System won't even boot archlinux 2015.09.01

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