PC freeze during the boot
-
- Offline
- 4 years 6 months ago
- 2013-08-30
Hi Alpine Team,
I just tried to run Alpine-2.6.3-x86 (for the first time) on my laptop from a USB key. It freezes before reaching the 'login:' prompt. (I tried various ctrl-chars, tried to switch to other VTs, ... nothing work,except ctrl-alt-del).
I removed 'quiet' from the kernel cmdline to get more info about where it freezes:
the last line on the screen is 'Loading hardware drivers . . ."
Just in case, I added 'nomodeset' to the kernel cmdline to no avail (the laptop is an Acer Aspire TimelineX 3820, with 2 gpus: intel and radeon. I already had some trouble with this, but booting with 'nomodeset' always worked)
I tried to boot in single user mode (adding '1' to the kernel cmdline). Everything is ok until the ash prompt. The hard disk and usb drivers are loaded, the usb key is mounted. '.modloop' is not mounted yet. When resuming the boot (exiting the ash shell), the same problem occurs.
I noticed that before the freeze, even before reaching the OpenRC message, after
13/13 installing alpine-base
executing busybox-1.21.1-r0.triger
I got the following grsec error message:
grsec: use of CAP_SYS_TTY_CONFIG in chroot denied for /sysroot/...
May it be related to my problem?
Does it ring any bell?
I also tried the same usb key on another PC and got right to the login prompt with no problem, so at least the usb key should be ok.
Unfortunately I am not familiar with either Alpine, OpenRC, mdev or grsec :-(
What would you suggest to move forward?
Is there any code I could add to the kernel cmdline to increase the verbosity of the OpenRC init? especially when it come to 'Loading hardware drivers...'?
Or maybe something I could add in grsec.gz to help diagnose this issue?
Thanks in advance for any tip
Phil
sounds like one of the hardware drivers is causing problems for you. I have no idea which though.
Is there, from the boot cmdline, a way to
1) blacklist some driver modules?
or
2) get a debug shell _after_ the switchroot and all the loading? (ie. just before or at the very beginning of openrc?
TIA
Phil
Hello,
I have the same problem as philanc, Alpine freeze at loading drivers.
here is what I tried:
installed releases 2.6.3, 2.6.4 ...same problem
added noquiet option ... no useful message.
The live CD boots without a problem, also I tried another machine it works fine .
I am suspecting a buggy or wrong driver get's installed
anybody can help me to figure out where the issue comes from ? or give me some hints or options I can try ?
in the mean time I am going to try the options philanc tried, Enable/Disable features in the BIOS maybe it wil solve the problem.
Hardware specs:
Motherboard: Tyan s2885 http://www.tyan.com/archive/products/html/thunderk8w_spec.html.
CPU: dual AMD opteron 246 with 4 Gigs of RAM
HDD: 2 SATA Drives
VGA: nVidia 8852, MX400D-T64 http://www.msi.com/product/vga/MX400D-T64.html#/?div=Overview
Hi naoufel,
It would be great to be able to blacklist modules from the the boot kernel cmdline.
An alternative could be to completely disable the automatic loading of drivers, with an option such as "noudev", but for mdev (which is used by Alpine if I understand correctly)
Does anybody knowing about mdev and Alpine know how to do this?
Thanks in advance,
Phil
Hi philanc
I would like to share with you my experience with alpine maybe it will help you.
I am using the alpine-xen 86_64 iso , I was not able to boot from the usb at all until I burned it on a CD, no matter what configuration I set int the BIOS or what I use to create the usb image. Well after I got it to boot and installed I run into the freezing issue when it start loading the drivers. I tried nomodeset noquiet in the kernel command line, I was able to get to the login prompt, my guess the issue is related to my nvidia 400MX and nouveau I was trying to find some workaround but I couldn't.
I end up by using nvidiafb, went to /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf commented the line #blacklist nvidiafb and I added blacklist nouveaufb
In your case I suggest to try older releases or the edge.
check the log files under /var/log/ maybe you will get some hints on where the issue comes from
Good luck and have a nice day!
PS: I am still learning about Alpine if I ever come across a way to get more info at the drivers load stage I will post it here
Hi!
I'm having the same problem, on an asus n53s laptop.
I'm very new to Alpine Linux, just a dummy question:
how do I get into the grub boot menu (to test some kernel command line options)?
I got there into twice but I didn't understand how, I just see that "Alpine will boot in 3,2,1 seconds" but no way to get into there...
thanks!