Help! My Linux won't boot.
Lilo is not correctly set up. (For example, issues with old versions of lilo above block 1024 of the disk drive). See LiloErrorCodes.
GRUB is unable to load it's first stage loader, use a rescue disk to start the machine. Re-install grub. See the GrubNotes page.
If this is the case your CMOS battery might have gone flat. They generally last 3-5 years and you lose your hard disk setup often if the battery dies which then causes this problem.
...but if I type in "configfile /grub/grub.conf" the menu loads.
This may occur with a Mirrored SoftwareRaid setup. Reconfigure your grub.conf file and remove any reference to a root (*) device.
install --stage2=/boot/grub/stage2 (hd0,0)/grub/stage1 (hd0) (hd0,0)/grub/stage2 p /grub/grub.conf install --stage2=/boot/grub/stage2 (hd1,0)/grub/stage1 (hd1) (hd1,0)/grub/stage2 p /grub/grub.conf quit
NB: This assumes a seperate /boot partition
From all the research I've done, it seems like problems of this sort are always caused by grub.conf mistakes. Mine seemed to be OK though, but I was still seeing problems. I noticed that when I ran
setup (hd0)
at the grub prompt, it mentioned a file called menu.lst . I renamed grub.conf to menu.lst, and things are now working! Apparently there may be multiple default filename possibilities for the GRUB menu file.
Don't rename grub.conf - make a symbolic link from grub.conf->menu.lst (man ln)
Various VIA chipset AMD Athlon/Duron motherboards (eg KT400, KM266) running kernel 2.4 (e.g. kernel 2.4.21) hang after printing this message. For example, Athlon XP2000+ on an AD77 motherboard (KT400), Athlon XP1800+/XP2400+ on a PC Chips M825L (KM266)). It is caused by APIC support in the kernel (not to be confused with "ACPI"). Booting with the "noapic" kernel flag doesn't fix it (although it can make the machine go into an infinite loop printing an error about apic on cpu 0). However, booting with "nolapic" kernel flag does in many cases work. Recompiling the kernel without APIC support resolves this. Note that the same motherboards will need the "nolapic" kernel flag to boot Knoppix - otherwise the screen just turns black and the pc hangs.
My KT400-based motherboard (that used to give the previous error message under older kernels) hangs immediately after printing this message with Ubuntu 5.10's default kernel (2.6.12-6). The message just before it is "ACPI: Looking for DSDT in initrd... not found!". Again, adding "nolapic" to the kernel boot command fixes this. Note that if your distribution uses the "quiet" kernel boot flag to hide all those messages then you'll never know that it's the motherboard's acpi support at fault...
This is usually caused by a failure to find or mount /dev or a bad /dev being used. When remastering Knoppix this can be cause by failing to preserve the special nature of the device files under /dev while building remastering. See the "dev" option of the mount(8)
crw-rw---- 1 root dialout 4, 64 Feb 10 1998 /dev/ttyS0 major ^ ^^ minor
grep char-major-10-135 /etc/modutils/arch/i386
See KernelErrorMessages for more information about missing modules.
Loading syslog... (5 minute pause)
Loading MTA... (5 minute pause)
Loading apache...failed
Your problem is DNS, or the lack thereof. These services will all want to look up names in their configuration (normally your local machine name) and will be taking a month of sundays to time out as a result. Confirm this by typing 'host mydomain.tla' at the root prompt.
A good solution for this is to make sure that your /etc/hostname file (which is set using hostname(1)) also appears in your /etc/hosts file, like such:
127.0.0.1 localhost full.local.domain.name alias1 alias2
Eg:
127.0.0.1 localhost firewall.wiki.invalid firewall
(Remember, /etc/hostname should contain the shortened version of the name, 'firewall', not the FQDN), and the first name for 127.0.0.1 in /etc/hosts should be 'localhost'
3 pages link to TroubleshootingStartUp:
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