I apologize for crossposting from the forum, but I am not getting any replies there so far.
I recently became an owner of a Thinkpad 770, which rather ancient by modern standards and decided to give it a spark of fresh life by installing Arch on it.
The CD boots okay, but when I try to actually boot x86 Arch, it Kernel Panics with the subject title. It tries /bin/init, /sbin/init and /bin/sh, failing with the same message for all of them. Some searching shows that ERRNO 26 is for a busy file, but I've no clue what may be accessing all the init files at the time of the boot.
I tried passing init=/usr/lib/systemd/systemd, but it fails with error -2. Is systemd not on the CD?
I have read about successful installations of Arch on this machine previously, but they mentioned no problems of the sort, presumably that was pre-systemd Arch.
Is there anything else I could try to get it working?
I am using a late 2015 ISO for the CD.
Am 2016-04-10 um 21:29 schrieb Serge Hooge:
The CD boots okay, but when I try to actually boot x86 Arch, it Kernel Panics with the subject title. It tries /bin/init, /sbin/init and /bin/sh, failing with the same message for all of them. Some searching shows that ERRNO 26 is for a busy file, but I've no clue what may be accessing all the init files at the time of the boot.
I tried passing init=/usr/lib/systemd/systemd, but it fails with error -2. Is systemd not on the CD?
I have read about successful installations of Arch on this machine previously, but they mentioned no problems of the sort, presumably that was pre-systemd Arch.
Is there anything else I could try to get it working?
I am using a late 2015 ISO for the CD.
Is there any error message when it tries to mount the root file system? Likely yes; so the problem would be that your initrd does not contain the right drivers for disk access.
* reboot with the CD * adjust /etc/mkinitcpio.conf The HOOK line looks at me like the following: HOOKS="base udev modconf block filesystems keyboard fsck resume" Try to remove 'autodetect'; it may strip modules that are needed by accident; 'resume' is necessary for s2disk. * re-create your initrd mkinitcpio -k YOURKERNELVER -g /boot/initramfs-linux.img KERNELVER can be found out by ls /lib/modules
Good Luck!
P.S.: these things are also explained under: http://www.elstel.org/software/hunt-for-4K-UHD-2160p.html.en#kernel
- reboot with the CD
- adjust /etc/mkinitcpio.conf
The HOOK line looks at me like the following: HOOKS="base udev modconf block filesystems keyboard fsck resume" Try to remove 'autodetect'; it may strip modules that are needed by accident; 'resume' is necessary for s2disk.
- re-create your initrd
mkinitcpio -k YOURKERNELVER -g /boot/initramfs-linux.img KERNELVER can be found out by ls /lib/modules
The problem is that I can't access Arch period. I get the CD splash screen, I hit enter to boot, cue the subject title.
I am not sure why error -26 either, can something else access the init files before they get launched?
... to get the most obvious question out of the way:
What's the exact processor type? And do other i686-type distributions work okay?
(What's the minimum spec anyway nowadays, still CMOV? SSE?)
--byte
Op 10 apr. 2016 21:32 schreef "Serge Hooge" cuznez@gmail.com:
I apologize for crossposting from the forum, but I am not getting any replies there so far.
I recently became an owner of a Thinkpad 770, which rather ancient by modern standards and decided to give it a spark of fresh life by installing Arch on it.
The CD boots okay, but when I try to actually boot x86 Arch, it Kernel Panics with the subject title. It tries /bin/init, /sbin/init and /bin/sh, failing with the same message for all of them.
Probably a stupid question, but have you checked the integrity of the disc? If you still have it (or can find it), try the md5sum/sha-1sum of the iso, or, failing that, try mounting the cd and then copying files off it. If there are errors and/or unreadable files, any OS will complain loudly (though Windows will mostly complain in it's journal^weventlog).
Just a thought.
Mvg, Guus Snijders
Op 11 apr. 2016 23:17 schreef "Guus Snijders" gsnijders@gmail.com:
Op 10 apr. 2016 21:32 schreef "Serge Hooge" cuznez@gmail.com:
[...]
I recently became an owner of a Thinkpad 770, which rather ancient by modern standards and decided to give it a spark of fresh life by installing Arch on it.
The CD boots okay, but when I try to actually boot x86 Arch, it Kernel Panics with the subject title. It tries /bin/init, /sbin/init and /bin/sh, failing with the same message for all of them.
[CD testing]
Also, try testing the RAM with something like memtest. It's not uncommon for older laptops to have failing dimms... (luckily, replacements are usually cheap ;) ).
Mvg, Guus Snijders
Alright, I'll tackle those one-by-one.
Jens Adam jra@byte.cx wrote:
... to get the most obvious question out of the way:
What's the exact processor type? And do other i686-type distributions work okay?
It's a Pentium II, i686-compatible. I've seen multiple reports of various distros working a-okay on it, including Arch.
Might consider swapping it out for something better later on. Haven't tried other distros yet.
Guus Snijders gsnijders@gmail.com wrote:
Probably a stupid question, but have you checked the integrity of the disc? If you still have it (or can find it), try the md5sum/sha-1sum of the iso, or, failing that, try mounting the cd and then copying files off it. If there are errors and/or unreadable files, any OS will complain loudly (though Windows will mostly complain in it's journal^weventlog).
I verified the ISO after I wrote it, so the CD should be okay.
Also, try testing the RAM with something like memtest. It's not uncommon for older laptops to have failing dimms...
I thought about it and it passed fine before. I ran it again and it returned full of errors on every land, so looks like it is indeed a failing memory.
I guess I'll order some new DIMMs and see how it goes.
Thanks for the help!
Just an update, I got the RAM changed with the brand new sticks, but the problem persisted.
Seems to be an issue with systemd-based distros, because I managed to get Devuan, FreeBSD and Slackware booted, while modern Debian crashed on me with the same result as Arch.
Not sure if downloading a new ISO for Arch would help at all by this point, will probably end up using Devuan or FreeBSD on this machine.
Not sure if I should bugreport this either.
Thanks for all the help regardless!
On mié, 2016-04-13 at 22:22 -0400, Serge Hooge wrote:
Just an update, I got the RAM changed with the brand new sticks, but the problem persisted.
Seems to be an issue with systemd-based distros, because I managed to get Devuan, FreeBSD and Slackware booted, while modern Debian crashed on me with the same result as Arch.
Serge, your problem got me thinking and I remembered a similar situation I had many years ago with some Dell OptiPlex boxes that wouldn't boot Linux even with a gun to their PSUs. The solution was to add the 'acpi_os_name="Microsoft Windows"' boot parameter to the kernel boot command line. See https://www.kernel.org/doc/Documentation/kernel- parameters.txt for all the acpi tricks you may try with yout laptop.
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