Antique installation challenge! - hangs in boot

[skeetly]

Let me preface this by saying this is my pet project and is of no importance whatever.    The wife questions my sanity for working several late nights on this, but she's pretty sure I'm insane anyway... 

I have an IBM Thinkpad 365 (2E9 i think) and I am trying to get a capable Linux installed on this Pentium 1 powerhouse!  I have VL 5.9 Light burned on cd, but this won't boot from the PCMCIA-external cd drive...  Here's what I have done so far:

partitioned the 2.1 gig drive with a 1.5gig bootable ext2 hda1, enough ext2 hda2 to hold the .iso file, and 80 megs of swap (hda3(hda5)).  I booted using your 3-floppy method and ran vinstall-iso, selecting the minimum more or less.  Things went along fine until the config process, when it apparantly ran out of hda1 space.  So I removed the hard drive installed it in another machine where I ran gParted to remove the partition holding the .iso file and expanded the first partition so it now has all ext2 hda1 with 80meg swap.  Reinstalled hd in the Thinkpad.  No dice on reboot - LILO not installed.  Booted using 2-disk BasicLinux 3.5  Highly recommended by the way!    The hda1 partition is there and looks like a mostly complete VL5.9 Light except for LILO AND the vmlinuz in /boot, some broken links here and there..   Tried again with the LILO on the BasLinux diskette as follows: LILO boot:hd root=/dev/hda1.  Kernel Panic!  missing vmlinuz!   I managed to get the vmlinuz installed (vmlinuz-ide-2.6.22.19) and tried booting using the LILO on the BasLinux diskette again with LILO boot:hd root=/dev/hda1.  This time things chugged along until the message about "kernel memory <something> freed then it just hangs.  I have the little TPad booted with BasLinux and the VLlight partition mounted so I can edit and copy at will, but I'm not sure what needs to be done.  Obviously letting the installation run to completion would probably fix things, but I can't get PCMCIA running with the 3-diskette system, and BasLinux works fine with PCMCIA but chokes on the vinstall script.

What is the boot sequence?  Where is it failing?  What do I need to edit? 

I know enough UNIX/Linux command line to get in serious trouble.  I have more trust in my hardware expertise...

Any help much appreciated!!!

[nightflier]

Looks like the kernel initially did not get copied from the ISO (/isolinux/kernel/) to hard drive (/boot/). The kernels get renamed in the process, "sata" becomes "vmlinuz-2.6.22.19" and "ide" -> "vmlinuz-ide-2.6.22.19". After that, LILO gets installed.

Basiclinux will not run the installer, it requires a 2.6.x kernel.

I do have a new version of the 3 floppies where I added the option of booting an installed version with it. If you hang on until tomorrow (tonight is blocked off for St. Paddy's Day celebration), I can get you a copy of it.

[skeetly]

Excellent news!  If the PCMCIA would start with the 3-diskette boot that would solve most of the difficulties.

I realize I would be better off with more harddrive space, but that is all I have.
I does have 72-odd megs of ram.

Thanks for the prompt response.  Erin go braugh!

[nightflier]

OK, awake and recovering. 

There is a way to use the floppies you have to boot your installed system. Restart and boot from floppies as you did when you ran the installer. When it gets to the end and gives you the message "If all went well, you can now load Linux and start install." and it tells you to press a key to continue, hit Ctrl-C to terminate the batch file. It should drop you to a c:\ prompt. Now issue command: loadlin.exe linux root=/dev/hda1 ro

[skeetly]

nightfllier's suggestion improved things a bit.  I was able to boot the /dev/hda1 installation and run the vasm setup.

Two (maybe related) problems now: 1. during boot, a message comes up "FATAL:unable to find <library> modules"  It is looking for 2.6.26.5 library, but only the 2.6.22.19 libraries are installed.  2. It still won't start the PCMCIA even though the rc.pcmcia script is run.  Thus I have no network or cdrom.  Is this related to the library issue?

Could I put the 2.6.22.19 initrd and vmlinuz-ide-2.22.19 on (several) diskettes?
Could I use a different boot command line?
I also have the bare.i on diskette from slackware 11 along with the rootdisk.img from the VL5.9 diskette.  That combination using "mount root=/dev/hda1" initial command line makes the thing hang right after the "freeing unused kernel memory" message.

thanks for any suggestions...

[nightflier]

Where did you get the 2.6.26.5 kernel from, and how did you transfer it to the hard drive?

[skeetly]

No idea to either question.  I assumed the 2.6.26.5 came from the diskette.  To my knowledge it is not on the /dev/hda.  It may have come from the VL6.0 standard cd I have.  I honestly don't remember where I got the diskette images from...

[nightflier]

You need to get either the "sata" kernel off the VL 5.9 ISO, and copy it to the hard drive in /boot, name it "vmlinuz-2.22.19", or use the "ide" one and name it "vmlinuz-ide-2.22.19". Actually, do both, that way you can chose between the two on startup.

After you've done this, boot into your VL install and re-run the LILO installation.

[skeetly]

I have done what you suggested, but it still is getting the fatal error in boot about the library mismatch.  Here is the first line of dmesg after booting the 3 diskettes, hitting <ctl-c> then entering "loadlin linux root=/dev/hda1 ro"
Linux version 2.6.26.5 (root@vector.linux.net) (gcc version 4.2.3) #6 Tue Sep 16 22:53:35 MDT 2008
Isn't this an indication that the boot image on the diskettes is 2.6.26.5?
I got the diskette images from http://ftp://ftp-osl.osuosl.org/pub/vectorlinux/veclinux-5.9/install/floppy/vlinst-bootfloppies/

This is what my /dev/hda1/boot looks like:
lrwxrwxrwx    1 root     root           37 Apr 14 23:58 README.initrd -> /usr/doc/mkinitrd-1.2.0/README.initrd@
lrwxrwxrwx    1 root     root           24 Apr 14 23:59 System.map -> System.map-ide-2.6.22.19
-rw-r--r--    1 root     root      1184077 Mar 21  2008 System.map-2.6.22.19
-rw-r--r--    1 root     root      1184077 Mar 21  2008 System.map-ide-2.6.22.19
drwxr-xr-x    2 root     root         4096 Jan 16  2008 bitmap/
-rw-r--r--    1 root     root          193 Jan 22  2005 boot.label
lrwxrwxrwx    1 root     root           20 Apr 14 23:59 config -> config-ide-2.6.22.19
-rw-r--r--    1 root     root        68615 Mar 21  2008 config-2.6.22.19
-rw-r--r--    1 root     root        68615 Mar 21  2008 config-ide-2.6.22.19
drwxr-xr-x    2 root     root         4096 Jan 16  2008 grub/
lrwxrwxrwx    1 root     root           16 Apr 15 02:45 initrd -> /boot/initrd.img@
-rw-r--r--    1 root     root       461436 Feb 25  2008 initrd.bad
-rw-r--r--    1 root     root      1937309 Apr 22  2008 initrd.img
drwxr-xr-x    2 root     root         4096 Apr 15 01:47 tamu/
lrwxrwxrwx    1 root     root           21 Apr 14 23:59 vmlinuz -> vmlinuz-ide-2.6.22.19
-rw-r--r--    1 root     root      4158296 Mar 21  2008 vmlinuz-2.6.22.19
-rw-r--r--    1 root     root      4158296 Mar 25  2008 vmlinuz-ide-2.6.22.19

Note that I changed initrd.  I saw that my initrd was much smaller, so copied initrd.img off the cd and linked it.  Don't know if this is a good thing to do, but it had no effect.

LILO install always fails no matter what options are selected, even making floppy boot disks.  LILO looks like it never got installed.  Not sure why.

Are there other loadlin options to try?  I also have the Slackware 11 bare-i plus rootdisk.img (from cd/install/floppy).  Using boot: mount root=/dev/hda1 makes the thing hang right after the "freeing kernel memory" message.  Are there alternate command lines to try with this?

 Still determined and grateful  for your assistance!

[nightflier]

You're right, the kernel on those diskettes is a custom stripped down 2.6.26.2 version. So of course that will cause problems when trying to boot the installed system, didn't think about that! 

Let me do some experimenting on my end and get back to you.

[nightflier]

Made some new floppies: http://cincinnatix.com/vectorlinux/nightflier/vlight59_boot_floppies.tar.gz

Using these 4 floppies you should be able to boot into your install, using the "ide" kernel.
When the DOS boot sequence is done, enter command:

Code:

loadlin ide root=/dev/hda1 2 ro

[skeetly]

  MAJOR BREAKTHROUGH!!!  
Booted the 3 diskettes using the loadlin linux root=/dev/hda1 ro and got to a root prompt.  Ran liloconfig using the defaults.  No errors!  Rebooted - LILO came up and defaulted to "linux".  Hit <enter> and it booted up on 2.6.22.19!!! (lol LILO)

Still had lib module issues (says /lib/modules/2.6.22.19/modules.dep is missing.  It isn't, but this is major improvement.
Did find and start PCMCIA, but still needs config tweaking...

I'm going to run vasm again and see what happens.

...developing story...  

[skeetly]

Thanks for the work on the diskettes, but I may not need them now.

[skeetly]

  Yippeee!!!

After running vasm it now boots normally and initializes the network with my dhcp router!

Will try the external pcmcia cdrom now!
If I get really ambitious I might try the X server 

 ;DThanks nightflier!!!