installcd hangs booting(initramfs)

Message

SaTaN0rX · Post by **SaTaN0rX** » Thu Aug 31, 2006 12:14 pm

pluggen in the gentoo 2006.1 install cd,
and it hangs around sayin booting(initramfs).

bootcmds were: gentoo-nofb ide=nodma nousb nosata.

the box has only 48mb of RAM.

[edit Made Sticky by NeddySeagoon 5 Sep 2006
Making Me Too posts won't get it fixed any faster,
please post only if you have something to contribute]
Unstuck. -- desultory

Kruegi · Post by **Kruegi** » Thu Aug 31, 2006 12:50 pm

Waht means it is trying to create a RAM disc.
48Mb of RAM maybe nt enough. The official hardwarerequirements are listing 64MB. (http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/handbook/h ... #doc_chap1)

Thomas

SaTaN0rX · Post by **SaTaN0rX** » Thu Aug 31, 2006 10:03 pm

is there any solution to get it running with 48mb ?

Kruegi · Post by **Kruegi** » Thu Aug 31, 2006 10:14 pm

You may try a "smaller" linux boot cd for installation.
There are many of these resue CDs around.
You will need to adapt some steps from the handbook but it should work.

Thomas

Zdenek Sojka · Post by **Zdenek Sojka** » Mon Sep 04, 2006 10:15 pm

I have the same problem - booting stops at 'Booting (initramfs)'

Pentium mmx 200MHz, 96MB RAM

Tried some flags at bootup, didn't help.

install-x86-minimal-2006.0.iso works fine, anyway ... now i would have to use a stage1 snapshot to install Gentoo there

md5sum of my image file:
00b7962ebf8f67e2385d8dc1ece55235 install-x86-minimal-2006.1.iso

red-wolf76 · Post by **red-wolf76** » Tue Sep 05, 2006 11:08 am

Me too!

Pentium MMX (don't laugh!) with 256MB of RAM...

zeuz · Post by **zeuz** » Tue Sep 05, 2006 12:04 pm

I'm having the same problem.

Pentium MMX 200mhz with 64mb ram

Post by **NeddySeagoon** » Tue Sep 05, 2006 12:28 pm

I could post a 'me too'.

It appears that the 2006.1 install media (all of them) are broken on < i686 x86 CPUs
Its a known bug and is being worked. The 2006.1 stage tarballs may be affected too.

The workaround is to revert to the 2006.0 install CDs and stages and go through the update pain.
Beware - there is a suspision (not yet confirmed) that the bug is linked to the combination of mtune=i686 and gcc-4.1.1, used in the 2006.1 release media. Therefore you may want to hang off the gcc-4.1.1 update just now, if you go down this path.

I have built a base install and a few odds and ends with gcc-4.1.1 and march=k6-2. That seemed to work.

The alternative is to wait for a fix.

I'll post more when I know more - watch this thread or this bug

alexbuell · Post by **alexbuell** » Fri Sep 08, 2006 2:18 pm

Folks, the 2006.1 x86 installer (both CD and DVD) will not boot on my old Pentium 233MHz box w/128MB of memory. It gets to the "booting (initramfs)..." line and then sponanteously reboots. This did not happen with the previous 2006.0 installer.

Has anyone else seen this? Any ideas? I tried lots of options including noapic etc) with no luck.

Why? Thanks.

Post by **NeddySeagoon** » Fri Sep 08, 2006 2:31 pm

alexbuell,

Its a 'feature'. There is a problem with the installer and the stage tarballs for the x86 platform.
Thats CPUs <i686, which includes P1s and AMD k6-x CPUs.

I'm told there will be some new material on the mirrors soon.

alexbuell · Post by **alexbuell** » Fri Sep 08, 2006 2:37 pm

NeddySeagoon wrote: Its a 'feature'. There is a problem with the installer and the stage tarballs for the x86 platform.
Thats CPUs <i686, which includes P1s and AMD k6-x CPUs.

Now I find this one out! Didn't they do testing on old Pentiums? I'l gladly offer my services in testing on these platforms so these problems don't happen again.

Post by **NeddySeagoon** » Fri Sep 08, 2006 2:43 pm

alexbuell,

The workaround is to start with a different bootable CD

endo · Post by **endo** » Sun Dec 31, 2006 5:55 pm

Hello

It seems the livecd-amd64-installer.iso is alive.
The ISOLINUX part was ok because the boot: prompt appeard and it accepted input.
With simply hitting return, or gentoo-nofb command, it loads the initramfs
and (it seems) the system reboots upon completion.
I tried on three Multi CPU Opteron machines, and the consequence was the same.

Does anybody have successful experience with the LiveCD?

jclarke · Post by **jclarke** » Fri Feb 02, 2007 11:23 pm

I just tried installing on Virtual PC 2007 with 512 MB assigned and got the same message with 2006.0 as I get with 2006.1

KungFuJesus · Post by **KungFuJesus** » Mon Mar 05, 2007 4:14 am

yuck, pentium mmx with gentoo? Emerge -uav world would take like a week

I'm a power user myself, but you guys are hardcore. I'm in the process of a G3 300 mhz Gossamer installation, so I suppose it's just as bad. Still, I cringe at the thought of a P MMX. I suppose the smart thing to do would be to use a cross compiler, although I haven't had the time to mess with it and figure it out yet.

wolf31o2 · Post by **wolf31o2** » Fri Apr 13, 2007 4:18 pm

The problem was that the x86 stage2/stage3 was created with CHOST="i686-pc-linux-gnu", which caused glibc to build some i686-specific code into itself. This will be fixed for good with 2007.0, where the x86 stage2/stage3 will be built with CHOST="i486-pc-linux-gnu" and the i686 stage2/stage3 will be built with CHOST="i686-pc-linux-gnu". Also, we don't do any testing on old machines for several reasons. One is access. Another is time. Last, there's developer interest. We simply don't have the time and energy to devote to properly testing on ancient hardware for every release. We spend most of our time working with newer hardware simply because that is where the demand is for new features.

cookie-monster · Post by **cookie-monster** » Mon Apr 30, 2007 11:47 pm

I boot up the installcd for x86 choose the gentoo kernel and it starts loading
it gets me into this console where it says on every line i write with red LiveCD and with blue root#
i do no tknow what do do from here to install it because i did not download the livecd but it still says livecd!

What do i do wrong please tell me!
My machine is new it is a pentium mobile 1,4 ghz 64 video card and 512 ram!
I need urgent help please

dyn-westy · Post by **dyn-westy** » Tue May 15, 2007 3:32 pm

when i install everything when i restart it doesnt do anything doesnt load up nothing and it also says when the live cd that theres a bios bug at something something and that it fails to allocate mem resource what is wrong?

TigerJr · Post by **TigerJr** » Tue Jun 19, 2007 9:56 am

endo wrote:Hello

It seems the livecd-amd64-installer.iso is alive.
The ISOLINUX part was ok because the boot: prompt appeard and it accepted input.
With simply hitting return, or gentoo-nofb command, it loads the initramfs
and (it seems) the system reboots upon completion.
I tried on three Multi CPU Opteron machines, and the consequence was the same.

Does anybody have successful experience with the LiveCD?

i had same problem but whith Gentoo 2007.0 DVD on:
Memory: 113372k/122816k available
CPU0: Centaur VIA Samuel 2 Steping 03 (534Mhz)

used: gentoo-nofb nox nodma
And then system reboots!
And i tryed other Gentoo release and then boots fine!

install-x86-minimal-2006.1.iso works fine, anyway ... now i would have to use a stage1 snapshot to install Gentoo there

wmm · Post by **wmm** » Tue Apr 22, 2008 1:04 pm

Hi Guys,

I thought I'd let you know that I have an old installation of gentoo on my 486 Clevo notebook
with 16MB RAM, true it's not fast but seems to do it's job, will try to update soon with my new
knowledge of optimization tips I have learned so far on my pentium 133 mmx.

Installation was possible via knoppix v3.3 and chrooting to manual install using gentoo-handbook.

Just to let you know it does work, who cares I don't hava a working X yet.

See also my current Project CSSPC on my current homepage in german language:

http://tinyurl.com/2vk386 or
http://www.fen-net.de/Werner.Mayer/

I often reuse old hardware and will therefore also test new releases of gentoo on old hardware.

Bye,

Werner.

F1r31c3r · Post by **F1r31c3r** » Wed Dec 16, 2009 7:33 pm

nice too see that your still using older hardware. i remeber working on a 486 dx33 with slax slacware which i had got in floppy's from the front of a PC world magazine lol. Great thing about Gentoo is the amazing simplicity to use distcc which is where you can use a faster machine to compile the code and send back the binary, excellent technology.

good stuff people, oh yea i am sure if you had 10x 200mmx pentium pros all connected using distcc it would not take to long to compile. multi processors over 10/100 Ethernet hehe its all good fun

installcd hangs booting(initramfs)

installcd hangs booting(initramfs)

same here

2006.1 installer (both CD and DVD) fails to boot :-(

LiveCD(amd64) really alive?

InstallCd doesn't install on my x86 machine

need help black screen after install

Re: LiveCD(amd64) really alive?

Gentoo running in an old install on 486 with 16mb RAM

good to see