Booting issues

Initial boot of Linux had various problems: -

Default init level

Booting the installed linux, the default init level defaults to 5. To change this: -

boot linux in single user mode. E.g. 'linux single' from lilo. Once up, the root partition will be mounted readonly. To change this use 'mount -no remount,rw /'. Then edit the /etc/inittab file and change the line: -

id:5:initdefault:

to

id:3:initdefault:

Now we can work on the graphics driver issues …

Booting linux

When the system reached 'loading PCMCIA module' (init level 5) it would beep and then hang with the only recourse available was to hit the power button and reboot. It was whilst I was trying to fix this particular problem that I became to appreciate my decision to go with reiserfs instead of the standard ext2. Fsck'ing 80Gb of hard disks would have taken an age !

A workaround was used whilst fixing the underlying PCMCIA problem to enable the host to reach init level 5: -

1. Boot linux using: - linux NOPCMCIA="yes"
2. Or edit /etc/lilo.conf and change the append to include: -

   NOPCMCIA=yes.

A fix for the PCMCIA problem was eventually found. Edit the /etc/sysconfig/pcmcia file and change the appropriate lines to the following: -

PCMCIA_SYSTEM="external"
PCMCIA_CORE_OPTS="probe_io=0"

Booting XP pro

Booting XP pro from lilo just hangs, no errors, nothing. Checking out lilo.conf showed that the installation had assumed that the 'windows' boot disk was to be found on hdc1, i.e. the 2nd hard disk in my setup. Whereas I had configured it to be the 1st primary partition on hda. Thus, altered the target from /dev/hdc1 to /dev/hda1.

XP booted OK with no change from original boots except for new drives E: and F: which were, obviously, unreadable. Formatted the drives; E: using NTFS and F: using vfat32.