Live CD booting problems

[railk]

I've tried the Ubuntu, Slax and Knoppix live CDs, and all three failed
to boot properly. Ubuntu said it couldn't mount the CD, Knoppix said
"filsystem not found" (it seemed to look on /dev/hda). Slax seemed to
get further after many retries and quite some time, but after
displaying something like "detecting modules" it went to a black screen
and did nothing. Pressing CTRL brought the console up again, but I
could type whatever I wanted and nothing would happen.

My hardware:
Mainboard: Asus P5GD1
Onboard IDE/SATA+RAID controller (ITE IT8211)
Intel P4 3.2 GHz
Gfx Card: ASUS Extreme AX600XT-TD
HDs: Maxtor 6 Y160P0 (120GB)
WDC WD40 0BB-00DEA0 (40GB)
Opt. Drives:
NEC DVD_RW ND-1300A (boot drive)
BENQ DVD DD DW1620
Lite-on DVD SOHD-167T

Help? (Did I miss anything?)

[Mark South]

On Thu, 11 May 2006 07:04:50 -0700, railk wrote:

> I've tried the Ubuntu, Slax and Knoppix live CDs, and all three failed
> to boot properly.

Try the different bootcodes that each list in the help - normally you
press F1 or F2 at the boot prompt to find otu what they are.

The most frequent are DMA issues, so the first to try is the "nodma"
option or whatever they each call it.
--
mark south; echo znexfb...@lnubb.pb.hx|tr a-z n-za-m
"I can trace my ancestry back to a protoplasmal primordial atomic
globule. Consequently, my family pride is something inconceivable."
-- Gilbert & Sullivan, The Mikado

[railk]

Knoppix had DMA disabled by default, i enabled it once just to try,
same result. The other two had no obvious DMA settings at all. It's
definetly looking for the CD on the right drive, when dma was on
Knoppix displayed the drive labels and /dev/hda is the boot drive the
cd was in.

[Mark South]

Fine, then try "noapic", "acpi=off" etc etc. If you can boot using
"failsafe" then it's just a matter of finding what is the problem.

There's a lot of different hardware out there, y'know.

[buck]

Turn off hotplug and usb for the Slax CD. Try all these, then narrow
down if it works.

'nopcmcia', 'noapm', 'nousb', 'nohotplug', 'acpi=off'
--
buck

[railk]

In the BIOS, there existed a setting. This setting had no name, but
it's parent "IDE Configuration" lived on the BIOS main page. The
setting knew only two things: Enhanced Mode and Compatible Mode. It did
not even know much about those modes, only that Enhanced was meant for
so-called "Native OSs" like Windows 2000 and XP. Compatble was meant
for "Legacy OSs" like Win98, Win95 and DOS. But there was more.
Unknowing to this setting, the Legacy OSs also included Linux and
possibly others. And so, when the poor railk happened upon this setting
just before bedtime, and changed it, Linux booted successfully from the
Knoppix CD. The fscking setting coulda been given a slightly better
description...

Sorry, just felt like it ;)

Anyway, havn't tried SLAX or Ubuntu yet, but it seemed to be the same
problem, so it'll probably work there too. Should I ... report ... this
problem (or whatever you do...)? And if so, where?