# Can't get Athon XP2000 to boot a 2.6.x kernel

## igoldtho

I'm sure I've seen something about this before but searching on 'Athlon boot 2.6' etc. gives a huge number of (unrelated) results!

All that happens is grub seems to find the kernel but then hangs before starting to boot (it won't boot a 2.6.x  install disk either).

I have an Athlon XP2000+ processor on a Gigabyte GA-7DXE motherboard (512K RAM) which runs beautifully with the latest 2.4.26_pre6-gentoo kernel. I want to try a 2.6.x kernel mainly to see if I can get gtkam to access my HP435 digital camera reliably (2.6 kernels seem to have better USB handling) but also I have heard some applications run faster etc.

I have tried with most minor versions of the 2.6 kernel as they have been released and even tried compiling for an i386 rather than Athlon (I even tried upgrading BIOS flash ROM).

I am wondering if there are some BIOS settings I need to change or are there some arguments I should pass to the kernel?

If anyone else has had this problem I would be very pleased to hear how you overcame it.

Thanks

Ian

----------

## dsd

you say that it hangs - how far does it get? do you have any text on screen at all? do the keyboard lights start blinking?

have you tried enabling "early printk" under kernel debugging? are you using a framebuffer?

----------

## igoldtho

it appears to start booting. Says something about finding a kernel and on the next line shows what appears a hex code for (?) the disc address.

I don't think its getting far enough to be frame buffer thing. 

Haven't tried enabling "early printk". will try that next.

I'm trying the old IDE driver on Primary interface option (recompiling now) - seemed worth a try..

----------

## igoldtho

OK. all that comes up is:

  Booting 'Gentoo (vmlinuz-2.6.6-rc2) - hda9

root (hd0,0)

  Filesystem type is ext2fs, partition type 0x83

kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.6-rc2 ro root=/dev/hda9

  [Linux - bzImage, setup=0x1400, size=0x152261]

this is with "Use old disk-only driver on primary interface" (same result either way).

I'm guessing "early printk" wont tell me anything untill after this point anyway?

And yes I have ext2 (and ext3) compiled into the kernel as well as "/proc file system support" and "Virtual memory file system support (former shm fs)"

----------

## HydroSan

Stupid to ask, but did you enable DEVFS support and enable 'Mount At Boot'? In 2.6, this is disabled by default. You can find it under Filesystem Support.

----------

## dsd

this looks like it might be a problem/bug with the kernel but we first need to rule out anything else it might be.

i hope its not too much to ask, but could you please try the following:

- briefly outline the technique you are using to compile and copy the kernel, so we can check theres nothing wrong there...

- build a VERY minimalistic kernel just for testing purposes. completely disable things like sound, network, cdrom, USB, parralel port etc. definately dont include ACPI or APM. it doesn't matter if you think the kernel might not boot properly without them, the fact is that you should get some indicative error message and the system should not freeze.remember to enable early printk! if you are unsure, i can send you a .config to use.

- reboot into the minimalistic kernel. let us know what happens.

- if the exact problem still persists, try stripping out hardware - unplug everything except keyboard,monitor,power and remove sound cards, network cards, etc (of course, be careful when handling hardware). if you have a sound/network chip built into your motherboard, disable them in the bios. attempt to boot up into the minimalistic kernel, see if the same problem persists.

also, do you have any reason to suspect there is anything wrong with the hardware (from your experience under 2.4)? e.g. random crashes/segfaults, freezes during normal usage ?

thanks

----------

## igoldtho

HydroSan - not stupid to ask but yes to "DEVFS support and enable 'Mount At Boot'" (I had to double check). Although I think this would show up a little later in the boot process?

dsd -

Before heading too far down this path, I have been unable to boot an install disk with a 2.6 kernel (have tried a gentoo one and Fedora Core 2 test3). I too am suspicious about my hardware as I have seen other posts in the forums of Athlons running 2.6.x kernels (obviously booting OK) although I have seen at least one with exactly the same symptoms as mine - no fix posted  :Sad: .

... anyhow a brief outline:

1) copy .config from working 2.4.x kernel to 2.6.x directory;

2) make oldconfig #(accept defaults)

3) make xconfig - save - exit #(cofigure as per preceeding discussion)

4) make bzImage

5) make modules_install

6) mount /boot

7) cp /usr/src/linux-2.6.6-rc2/arch/i386/boot/bzImage /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.6-rc2

8.) edit grub.conf (new stanza: copy a working one and change the kernel name to match the one I just copied into boot

9) reboot

If you could send me a minimal .config that would be cool (I'd be a bit worried about taking out something important).

The hardware is generally pretty stable (I can change that by attempting to overclock - so I don't anymore). 

Thanks for taking an interest this has been bugging me for a while

----------

## dsd

 *igoldtho wrote:*   

> ... anyhow a brief outline:
> 
> 1) copy .config from working 2.4.x kernel to 2.6.x directory;
> 
> 2) make oldconfig #(accept defaults)
> ...

 

baaaad!!!!!

copying kernel configs from one version to another is not really a good way of doing it. i tend to even avoid doing it for small jumps (e.g. 2.6.5 to 2.6.6-rc1), doing it from 2.4 to 2.6 is *definately* out of the question.

your method looks alright apart from that, so my next suggestion would to be to start with a fresh kernel (i.e. unmerge the sources, manually clean the directory, re-merge) and configure it from scratch. it really doesnt take too long, especially when you've done it a few times before.

if this still does not resolve the problem, then let me know and i'll post a minimal .config to try.

----------

## igoldtho

OK. done that - same symptoms. I'd be happy try a minimal .config -  which sources are the best to use & where do I enable "early printk"?

(I'm guessing "early printk" will write stuff to screen?)

----------

## dsd

ok, let's try the minimal config idea.

```

mkdir /etc/portage

# dont worry if it already exists..

echo "=sys-kernel/development-sources-2.6.6_rc3 ~x86" >> /etc/portage/package.keywords

emerge "=sys-kernel/development-sources-2.6.6_rc3"

cd /usr/src

rm linux

ln -s linux-2.6.6-rc3 linux

cd linux

wget http://reactivated.net/config.igoldtho -O .config

make bzImage

# then mount /boot copy over kernel, update bootloader etc.

```

early printk is enabled in this config. all you need to do is compile and try.

could you also post which kernel parameters you are using in the bootloader? Thats one thing we havent checked

----------

## igoldtho

OK!

Got it to boot!

I used development-sources-2.6.6_rc2 though (already using ~x86).

then incrementally added stuff and recompiled to get devfs, network, sound. I did actually add a few more things and managed to reproduce the problem (If you like I can be a bit more diligent in testing each additional section til I can isolate exactly what was causing the problem - might be useful for making a bootable install disk).

For now I'm pretty happy. I even got it to work starting with the defaults in a fresh emerge of development-sources-2.6.6_rc3 (just making sure to only enable the bits that I need).

The new CD burning stuff is pretty cool (if you use xcdroast you can just add /dev/hdc as a device in the setup section) AND gtkam now loads my HP435 camera flawlessly!

I've really impressed with the support, Thanks very much!

----------

## dsd

great to hear it works.. and yes, 2.6 is wonderful  :Smile: 

i would still be interested in tracking down the problem though, it should not happen - if its not a hardware problem then its definately some sort of hardware bug.

if you could attempt to reproduce it again, and figure out the problem it would be useful.

enabling "early printk" may be useful in tracking the problem. to do this, you need to enable CONFIG_EMBEDDED ("Remove kernel features-useful for embedded systems" or something like that) and then enable Early printk under Kernel hacking.

----------

## lbrtuk

I had this a while back (though on a pentium II). What I found it to be was acpi support. So now I boot with acpi=off appended to my kernel line and it works.

----------

## dsd

that is a likely cause, i think i mentioned this in an earlier post.

igoldtho: if you do find that enabling ACPI causes the lockup, you could try updating the bios on your motherboard (this may solve the problem)

----------

## davidl

I've never had any problems with ACPI, particularly with 2.6. It is APIC that tends to be the real hardware pain. When it works it is great, but when it doesn't - hang.

Watch out for it particularly on nForce boards - ACPI should be fine, but if you get any unexpected hangs then disable APIC in the kernel. Don't disable it in the BIOS, otherwise Windows will hang.

----------

## igoldtho

Hmm, I've tried recompiling with APIC, ACPI and a few other things - haven't had any problems.

I did try (just to test the theory) using the old 2.4 config and doing make oldconfig. That definitely breaks it (maybe something unnecessarily enabled in the old config that didn't break anything with 2.4).

The boot disk thing would still be a problem for someone starting from scratch though.

I've noticed that programmes seem to take longer to load than with 2.4 - 50% longer for mozilla, 2-3 times slower for openoffice. Any ideas?

----------

## igoldtho

OK - solved speed problem. Don't know which fixed it but I enabled APIC and I2o. Nice and fast now!

----------

## igoldtho

I have managed to reproduce the problem by enabling VIDEO_SELECT (Video mode selection support) under Graphics support. I would be curious to know why this is a problem with 2.6 but not 2.4.

I have a Matrox g200 video card if that helps anybody.

----------

## dsd

could you re-test and send me your (broken) .config file so that i can try myself?

also let me know which kernel version you are running..

either upload to webspace or email it to dsd /at/ gentoo.org

thanks

----------

