Arch Linux

Blargz

Member

Registered: 2009-02-24

Posts: 2

Unable To Boot Install Disc

Greetings, fellow Linux-users. Hopefully someone knows what's going on here, or can help me figure out how to figure it out myself.

I've (repeatedly) attempted to install Arch, only coming to grips with the reality of the painful frustration when one simply cannot google/search up an answer and be on their merry way. The problem is, it seems, uevents. Whilst the disc goes through kernel loading fine, it starts running initscripts..and...kazam. Udev's uevents does something crazy. It displays busy, then...

By crazy, it (at default, no adjustments to boot parameters) means repeatedly printing a trace (it APPEARS to be repeatedly, it may be screen flicker, but it looks like it does it over and over again) after it _attempts_ to load uevents. Seems like udevd isn't liking something, and is blowing up when it tries..well, something. I just don't know how to find out what (if you're clueless, telling me how to debuggify it would be much help).
I've taken a stab at fiddling with ACPI and PCI settings (off/force, nobious/assigned-busses/conf1/conf2) to no avail. It has changed the outcome slightly, once even stating that "udevd[1194] has exited with preempt_status 1", but each time the same trace is printed, which is rather disheartening. The last three lines of it (pardon, it's hard to scribble down a full-screenfull, but I can take a picture if needed):

vfs_read 0x9d/0x160
sys_read 0x41/0x80
sysenter_do_call 0x12/0x33

I've tried IDE/no SATA (although two drives are SATA, the hard-disk I aim to install to and the CD-RW drive are both good ol' IDE/ATA), to the exact same results each time. I've attempted to fiddling with various BIOS settings (not to get into too much detail, but enabling/disabling some LAN boot/1394 options and IRQ.) with absolutely no effect whatsoever. Tried unplugging every USB device (..including the mouse), and removing any other needless peripherals, but again, absolutely no affect.

If it's worth noting, I use a GeForce 6200 PCI card, with a DVI-D link to a 16:9 widescreen display on aforementioned box. Oddly, since installing these two gadgets, I've ran into a lot of mysterious issues. Motherboard is a PTGV-LA (alas, OEM horror!), but has never given me *NIX issues in the past.
It has a shiney new 2GB of DDR2 in it, too. Memtest is clean.

Thanks for any help.

tomk

Forum Fellow

From: Ireland

Registered: 2004-07-21

Posts: 9,839

Re: Unable To Boot Install Disc

You didn't say whether all of the above is from one CD. If it is, try burning another one, after first verifying that your downloaded iso has the correct checksum. Burn it at a low speed to reduce the possibility of errors.

If your box supports USB boot, try the usb image as well.

Inxsible

Forum Fellow

From: Chicago

Registered: 2008-06-09

Posts: 9,183

Re: Unable To Boot Install Disc

I've (repeatedly) attempted to install Arch, only coming to grips with the reality of the painful frustration when one simply cannot google/search up an answer and be on their merry way. The problem is, it seems, uevents. Whilst the disc goes through kernel loading fine, it starts running initscripts..and...kazam. Udev's uevents does something crazy. It displays busy, then...

This problem was related to the fact that the iTCO_wdt module was giving some problems. Blacklisting this module from the MODULES array in rc.conf seems to work. But given that you are trying to boot the install CD, you would have to enter a kernel entry and disable loading that module.

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Blargz

Member

Registered: 2009-02-24

Posts: 2

Re: Unable To Boot Install Disc

This problem was related to the fact that the iTCO_wdt module was giving some problems. Blacklisting this module from the MODULES array in rc.conf seems to work. But given that you are trying to boot the install CD, you would have to enter a kernel entry and disable loading that module.

Rad. I'll go give it a shot and see if anything new explodes. Thanks.

You didn't say whether all of the above is from one CD. If it is, try burning another one, after first verifying that your downloaded iso has the correct checksum. Burn it at a low speed to reduce the possibility of errors.

If your box supports USB boot, try the usb image as well.

If the BIOS wants to boot from a USB-drive, it's not very kind about making it obvious.

I did it with both a FTP disc and a Core disc, images & burnt contents verified. Results are the same. Even tried another brand CD-R & burning from a different PC for the Core ISO (desperation!), no such luck, I'm afraid.

ascending

Member

Registered: 2009-02-28

Posts: 2

Re: Unable To Boot Install Disc

you would have to enter a kernel entry and disable loading that module.

I think I have the same problem, could you please explain how to do that?

upd: ahh, sorry, found the solution myself:

noload=iTCO_wdt

Last edited by ascending (2009-03-01 09:36:16)