Linpus Crashing at Blue Aspire One Screen?

Hi,

I have the Aspire One 120gb XP version, and I was trying to run Linpus off a 8gb SDHC card (going to swap out for 16GB card as soon as I figure out how to get it to work). I can't boot it off the internal card reader (yet), but using an external USB card reader, I can boot into Linpus. However, it hangs at the blue screen with Aspire One on the bottom right, with the caps lock key blinking and SDHC activity (light on my usb card reader) not showing any signs of reading/writing. Does anyone know what might be causing this? The same thing happens when I try the install on a USB flash drive (I can't afford to wipe my internal hard drive to try linpus)

thanks for the help

 

bump.

I just switched to the 16gb sdhc card, and it's still the same. in fact, my DVD gives me an error when installing to the 16gb sdhc card, so I downloaded another image and re-burned it at 4x, and now it installs, but still hangs at the blue screen. It's really frustrating. I'm sure somebody has to have had this problem before...

edit:

I used Grub on my ubuntu partition to boot into the SDHC, and turned off silent boot. I get the following error (text over the blue screen):

Code:

mkrootdev: label linpus not found
mount: error 2 mounting ext2
pivotroot: pivot_root (/sysroot,/sysroot/initrd) failed: 2
umount /initdrd/proc failed: 2
TuxOnIce: No attempt was made to resume from any image that might exist.
Kernel panic - not syncing: No init found.  Try passing init=option to kernel.
_

I suspect that the kernel does not read the SDHC memory for whatever reason. Any ideas how to fix this?

 

The problem is the "root filesystem". Basically, you are telling linpus (linux) to boot from the USB, but the root filesystem is still set to the internal drive.

This gets it very confused, because it knows that there is no linux to be found where you have pointed it.

On the boot media, you need to edit "/boot/grub/grub.conf". You will see "root=LABEL=linpus", which you probably want to change to your USB device.

ALSO - as far as I know, the basic kernel does not have USB mass storage driver contained in it, the initrd image may need to have this added (google initrd for information). Try it, it may already be present!

ALSO - check /etc/fstab to be sure that the file systems to be mounted at startup are correct.

Sorry, this isn't actually an "easy" problem -- mostly people rely on installers to take care of these issues...

 

What should I change "root=LABEL=linpus" to? I tried root=/dev/sdb1/ and root=/media/linpus/ ... and neither worked.

/etc/fstab doesn't exist in linpus (that I see)...


For some reason, I couldn't use the "--preload=module" parameter for mkinitrd (in Ubuntu)... and my Fedora 10 livecd wouldn't let me use sudo... so I couldn't rebuild the initrd.img file.

I moved the /boot directory from the SDHC to my Ubuntu partition under /linpus. After pointing Ubuntu's grub to that folder, when I boot up, I get the same blue screen, same kernel panic.

Leaving the "root" pointer as it is, and changing the initrd pointer to the Ubuntu initrd gives a very weird error (couldn't load directories /lib/modules/2.6.23.9lw... etc etc etc)

I have a feeling that if I can get the initrd file to load my SDHC card off the internal reader, everything will work out. However, that is not possible at the moment, as I can't figure out how to recompile the initrd.img file.

i hope someone has some idea of how this is done...

 

Update:

I used a Fedora 8 liveCD (apparently you have to type "su -" instead of "sudo su" like Ubuntu and OS X, which I'm used to, to get root access), and tried to use "mkinitrd" to rebuild the file from linpus using this command:

Code:

 # cp -r /media/linpus/lib/modules/2.6.23.9lw /lib/modules 
# mkinitrd --preload usb-storage --preload ehci-HCD --preload sd_mod --builtin ohci-HCD /media/linpus/boot/linpus-initrd.img 
# cp /media/linpus/boot/linpus-initr.img /linpus/

This was copied off an italian forum (http://translate.google.ca/translat...linpus&hl=en&rlz=1C1GGLS_en-USCA299CA304&sa=G), which seemed to work for somebody installing linpus on a USB flash drive.

For some reason, even though ehci-HCD.ko and ohci-HCD.ko are both present, mkinitrd wouldn't run if I preload ehci-HCD.

When I boot into linpus (SDHC card on usb adapter) via grub on my Ubuntu partition (pointing initrd to the new file on my hard drive), I get a bunch of errors:

Code:

Red Hat nash version 6.0.19 starting
ohci_hcd: version magic '2.6.23.14-115.fc8 SMP mod_unload 686 4KSTACKS ' shoud be '2.6.23.91lw SMP preempt mod_unlod CORE2 '
insmod: error inserting '/lib/ohci-hcd.ko': -1 Invalid module format
sd 3:0:0:0: [sdb] Assuming drive cache: write through
sd 3:0:0:0: [sdb] Assuming drive cache: write through
ext3: No journal on filesystem on sdb1
mount: error mounting /dev/root on /sysroot as ext3: Invalid argument
setuproot: moving /dev failed: No such file or directory
setuproot: error mounting /proc: No such file or directory
setuproot: error mounting /sys: No such file or directory
switchroot: mount failed: No such file or directory

Then it hangs.

If I boot the new initrd.img with the sdhc card in the left SD slot, I get this:

Code:

Red Hat nash version 6.0.19 starting
ohci_hcd: version magic '2.6.23.14-115.fc8 SMP mod_unload 686 4KSTACKS ' shoud be '2.6.23.91lw SMP preempt mod_unlod CORE2 '
insmod: error inserting '/lib/ohci-hcd.ko': -1 Invalid module format
mount: could not find filesystem '/dev/root'
setuproot: moving /dev failed: No such file or directory
setuproot: error mounting /proc: No such file or directory
setuproot: error mounting /sys: No such file or directory
switchroot: mount failed: No such file or directory

It looks like with the USB card reader, the SD is found, but the system tries to mount a ext3 file system, and fails. with the sd card in the internal reader, nothing is found.

When I boot into linpus via the usb card reader directly, no matter what I do with grub.conf, using the new initrd.img, I get a blank black screen. Using the old initrd.img, I get the old KP w/ blue screen.