Boot questions

[Larry Hartman]

On Friday 08 June 2007 12:17:26 pm Derek Broughton wrote:
> Larry Hartman wrote:
> > 1.  At boot time, immediately after GRUB starts I receive this error:
> >
> > MP-BIOS: 8254 timer not connected to......
> >
> > I googled it and discovered that it has to do with the noapic option in
> > the
> > boot process.  So I added noapic and was unable to boot except in
> > recovery mode.  Here is the applicable boot.list portion:
> >
> > ## additional options to use with the default boot option, but not with
> > ## the alternatives
> > ## e.g. defoptions=vga=791 resume=/dev/hda5
> > # defoptions=quiet splash
>
> Precisely as expected!  Which part of "use with the default boot option,
> but not with the alternatives" is unclear :-)  Sorry, it's actually a
> pretty common mistake.
>
> If you want an option available to both the default and alternate boot
> stanzas, you put it in the "kopt" variable.

ok....I think I understand the difference.  I added it to the defoptions, and 
the default boot didn't boot, the alternate did....in my thinking placing the 
variable at that location, rather than kopt saved me a lot of pain, by 
leaving me a usable login to undo the changes to the default login.  But in 
saying this I'll admit that the envelope of my knowledge is being severely 
stretched.

Now my real point is that the MP-BIOS error is somehow related to APIC, but 
the suggested solution to add noapic to the boot process caused the system to 
not boot.  I think the issue is fairly rare, was hoping someone could give me 
definite pointers.


>
> > I understand there is a nolapic option as well as noapic...any
> > difference?
>
> Yeah...  but don't ask me what the difference is :-)
>
> > 2.  Also in the middle of the boot process, when my drives are mounted,
> > the
> > splash screen goes away and never returns....all check boxes afterwards.
> > How to fix this...not that it has any great importance, just curious to
> > know...
>
> My _bet_ (and I could tell for sure if I saw your boot process) is that
> it's in the Network initialization.   The splash intentionally times out if
> it doesn't get an [OK] response in a given time - otherwise you could sit
> watching the splash forever.  My network startup waits for 30 (or maybe 60)
> seconds if it isn't connected (presumably a dhcp timeout - it's not
> something I care about as I almost never reboot) and the splash screen goes
> away.
>
Okidokee, I'll look into that possibility.

> > 3.  Last, the final checkbox line in the boot has a "fail" warning.  I
> > believe it has to do with apache2 webserver.....which does load...I see
> > it in the
> > memory....but the line goes by so quickly I can not read it all.  What
> > file on the system contains all of these checkbox lines so that I can
> > review them and troubleshoot?
>
> Just use ctrl-alt-f8, and it puts you back to the terminal where the boot
> process was logging.  Interestingly, when doing this to find out which
> terminal it was on, I discovered one of _my_ last scripts (S99nxserver) has
> an error, and _it_ is working fine, too!
> --

I didn't think of this...now that you suggested it and I tried it, discovered 
my video card messes up the monitor on the other screens with vertical 
colored lines.....uggh, ATI.  But that is another concern.  Would there be a 
way I could check this from within KDE?


> derek