Salix Live KDE 13.37

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JRD
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Location: Lyon, France

Re: Salix Live KDE 13.37

Post by JRD »

Thanks for these info!

About your keyboard, could you explain further? What is the problem exactly (to see if it could be enhanced for future version of Live CDs) ?
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gaucho
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Re: Salix Live KDE 13.37

Post by gaucho »

Bonjour, JRD,

You're welcome.

I hesitated whether to mention the keyboard oddity because I didn't want to sound overly critical. (On the other hand, I searched the forum and didn't see anyone else posting about an issue with this). I'm 99.9% sure this disc was burned correctly -- the md5sum was verified, it was burned with K3B on another distro's partition to reliable media (TDK), other discs recently burned in the same way have all been fine -- but I'm not sure whether the problem is due to some oddity with my hardware (optical drive) or with the disc architecture itself ... (BTW, I have a wired Logitech keyboard with a USB connection, if that makes any difference).

I experienced the following when selecting the initial keyboard layout (immediately after the disc booted):

If "English (US)" is selected:

First, I see the "Welcome to GRUB" message.
The boot proceeds to the list of keyboard layout options.
I select "English (US)" and hit the Return key.
At this point, the system hangs / freezes ... it never proceeds to the launch menu (where I can select "Boot Salix ...").
For a time there is disc activity, i.e., I can hear the DVD spinning in the drive, then there is silence.
I still see the black screen with the "Salix Live KDE Edition" background image, and the cursor frozen in the upper left-hand corner.
Here's a photo of that screen:

http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/54 ... reeze.jpg/

I've waited as long as 10-15 minutes, but the system never progresses to the launch menu.


If "English (GB)" is selected:

After a pause, the system proceeds to the launch menu.
I scroll down and select "Change boot options".
Next, I select "Custom Linux kernel parameters" and enter the appropriate cheatcode.
I return back to the launch screen.
I select the "Boot Salix ..." line and hit the Return key.
After a pause, the system begins booting normally (init info displayed in verbose mode, etc.) and proceeds to the Live desktop.

I will double-check this info later tonight and will post corrections, if necessary. I will also try timing the "hang" with the US keyboard option to give you a better idea of how long it is non-responsive ... If there is something specific you'd like me to try, or document, please let me know.

Thanks,
=david

P.S.
The motherboard in this PC is an MSI K9N6PGM2-V (stamped "MS-7309 ver:2.1" on the mobo itself) and the BIOS is American Megatrends (AMI) v2.2 09252009.
Last edited by gaucho on 26. Aug 2012, 18:37, edited 1 time in total.
Registered Linux User # 442201

Dell Latitude E4300 laptop: Intel Core2 Duo P9400 CPU, 8 GB RAM, Samsung 850 EVO 250 GB SSD, Intel Wireless 7260
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JRD
Salix Warrior
Posts: 950
Joined: 7. Jun 2009, 22:52
Location: Lyon, France

Re: Salix Live KDE 13.37

Post by JRD »

Hi Gaucho,
Thanks for this fully report.

I experencied some related behavior on some machines too (using French language). For no specific reason. I think grub2 may have a bug in their keyboard driver or some keybaords or BIOS are weird in a way that makes grub2 keyboard manager to hang. Actually it didn't hang really for me, if I press for example the "down" key or "enter" key after the screen you paste. Sometimes I have the next menu, but the up & down key didn't work further (but they were on the first selection language screen).
It is closely related to hardware and/or bios, and I have difficulties knowing and understanding the problem. I need to check with the latest version of grub2, maybe they corrected some thing related.
Could also be related to unicode and not to the keyboard directly. When you select the language, you select two things: your keyboard layout and the language of the next menus. To print correct characters, we could not stick to using ASCII which can only be used for english. Therefore we switch the terminal to unicode and load a unicode font to display correct characters. Perhaps the bug is related to this.
I will make a ISOs (with no OS on it) with different configuration of grub2 and let people test them with their hardware to gather more informations on what's really going on.
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gaucho
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Re: Salix Live KDE 13.37

Post by gaucho »

Hi, JRD,

Thank you for the detailed explanation; it helps me better understand what is happening. I'd like to add another bit of information to confirm your experience that this is closely related to the hardware and BIOS. I used exactly the same Live CD which froze on my desktop PC to create a Live USB stick -- via the LiveClone feature, which worked perfectly -- and subsequently used that to install Salix 13.37 KDE on my netbook.

The Live USB loaded without any problem on the HP Mini -- no hangs, no freezes and no special boot parameters needed. Since the live session worked smoothly (except for wireless functionality, which I already knew would be problematic), I proceeded with installation.

http://www.salixos.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=3838
"Salix 13.37 KDE on a HP Mini 210."
Registered Linux User # 442201

Dell Latitude E4300 laptop: Intel Core2 Duo P9400 CPU, 8 GB RAM, Samsung 850 EVO 250 GB SSD, Intel Wireless 7260
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