[ubuntu-za] Strange Boot Behaviour

[wez]

Hi Tim

Check your system has the amount of RAM it's supposed to have, ie it's not
'missing' any?

The output shows a "low memory corruption" and honestly Im not too sure why
on the details. There is a discussion about this issue at
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1106037 with links to a launchpad
bug that might be what you're experiencing. Since your syste worked until
the update, it might point to a bug. But do not rule out hardware failure
either, sometimes bad timing just happens between updates.

If its the bios, I would replace the BIOS battery and check the vendor's
site for firmware updates too. These lines show your DVD drive is detected,
but the bios issue might affect it being usable by Ubuntu

[  116.543868] scsi 2:0:0:0: CD-ROM            HL-DT-ST DVD-RAM
GSA-H55L 1.05 PQ: 0 ANSI: 5
[  116.548000] sr0: scsi3-mmc drive: 48x/48x writer dvd-ram cd/rw
xa/form2 cdda tray




On Tue, Dec 22, 2009 at 9:09 PM, Tim Johnson <tim at cybersmart.co.za> wrote:

>
> All was going fantastically well (Karmic on AMD Sempron) until about 3 days
> ago when I ran an update and had the dreaded Partial Upgrade message.
>
> I ran it and the ran the fix dpkg routine.
>
> Since then, my computer takes about 45 seconds to get from reset to grub
> and then ages before it reaches the login screen.  I get a blinking cursor
> on a black screen for what seems like minutes and then normal usplash and
> login sequence. My SATA DVD Writer has also disappeared for no good reason
> whatsoever.
>
> There appears to be a BIOS issue (it never took that long to get past the
> BIOS before (almost instantaneous) and boot times were in the 25 second
> range.
>
> I've set optimized defaults in the BIOS but that hasn't solved anything.
>
> I've tried booting into 2 previous kernels, but my DVD drive stays
> "missing" and boot times are still horrendous.  Once booted, everything is
> fine except for the missing drive.
>
> I can see a number of problems in dmesg (attached) but have no idea what to
> do with them.  There is a video switch issue at 0.78 and SATA issues over a
> long period of time starting at about 8.5.
>
> Could somebody knowledgeable please browse through my dmesg and tell me
> what I can do to get back to where I was?
>
> Thanks,
>
> Tim
>
> --
> Using Ubuntu 9.10 and Opera 10
> --
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> ubuntu-za at lists.ubuntu.com
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>
>
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