failed to boot constantly at the 1/3 of booting progress

[deserter]

I'm runing salix 14.0 sincee the RC1, and keeping to update to the newest. there always a booting problme occured when and then during the booting progress, at about 1/3 of the progress, with the black and white(or high light) stribes fill the screen. then i have to power off to reboot, usually reboot can boot succesfully.

I'm using a Dell laptop, with ati card, I installed salix with /boot and / /usr in one partition , and /home is in another one, all with ext4 .

where should I look at to solve this problm? please enlighten me !

[knome]

"Possibly" a corrupt filesystem. Using a LiveCD/USB run a disk check on your unmounted salix partitions. The command to use is fsck /dev/sdxX. If you need to identify your partitions fdisk -l should help.

If that doesn't solve the problem you may need to look in your log files.

[deserter]

thank you for your advice !

I did fsck process as you said . it shows clean. when i run fdisk command , there was a little unusual info as following:
Partition 5 does not start on physical sector boundary.
/dev/sda6 175285279 280157535 52436128+ 83 Linux
Partition 6 does not start on physical sector boundary.
/dev/sda7 280157599 625137344 172489873 7 HPFS/NTFS/exFAT
but i googled a little bit, it seems that shouldn't afect anything.

can u talk a little bit what log file spicifically i should look into ?

Thanks again!

[kcirick]

Hello,

This problem seems familiar to me, I remember it happening on my netbook (Acer Aspire One 722 with ATI card), but I don't remember the exact steps to solving the problem. I don't think it was anything to do with the filesystem though.

Could you tell me what specific Dell laptop it is? And what wireless module (I remember wireless was causing a lot of problem that had nothing to do with wireless)

I think the log knome is referring to is the boot log. You can view it by doing:

Code: Select all

sudo dmesg | less

Hopefully this will help

[knome]

The log files are in /var/log. As kcirick said, take a look at dmesg. If you don't have sudo set up use...

Code: Select all

su
dmesg | less

dmesg is not an "appended" log so it may not be helpful after a crash but it's still worth taking a look.

Also look at syslog...

Code: Select all

less /var/log/syslog

In both of these look for any warning , error or failed messages and see if anything stands out that may be relevant. You can use grep to cut down on the amount of text generated.

[deserter]

Hello,

This problem seems familiar to me, I remember it happening on my netbook (Acer Aspire One 722 with ATI card), but I don't remember the exact steps to solving the problem. I don't think it was anything to do with the filesystem though.

Could you tell me what specific Dell laptop it is? And what wireless module (I remember wireless was causing a lot of problem that had nothing to do with wireless)
[/code]

Dell Inspiron M5110/R
sudo lspci | grep -i Net
01:00.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8101E/RTL8102E PCI Express Fast Ethernet controller (rev 05)
02:00.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4313 802.11b/g/n Wireless LAN Controller (rev 01)

sudo lsmod

Code: Select all

Module                  Size  Used by
pci_stub                1373  1 
vboxpci                14992  0 
vboxnetadp             18387  0 
vboxnetflt             16839  0 
vboxdrv              1820463  3 vboxnetflt,vboxnetadp,vboxpci
snd_seq_dummy           1455  0 
snd_seq_oss            29048  0 
snd_seq_midi_event      5620  1 snd_seq_oss
snd_seq                51265  5 snd_seq_midi_event,snd_seq_oss,snd_seq_dummy
snd_seq_device          5228  3 snd_seq,snd_seq_oss,snd_seq_dummy
snd_pcm_oss            39183  0 
snd_mixer_oss          15404  3 snd_pcm_oss
rfcomm                 33736  8 
bnep                   10692  2 
ipv6                  279979  16 
xt_tcpudp               2495  7 
ipt_LOG                 7418  3 
xt_limit                2065  4 
xt_state                1287  2 
ipt_MASQUERADE          1730  1 
iptable_nat             4016  1 
nf_nat                 15280  2 iptable_nat,ipt_MASQUERADE
nf_conntrack_ipv4      11604  5 nf_nat,iptable_nat
nf_defrag_ipv4          1331  1 nf_conntrack_ipv4
nf_conntrack           52529  5 nf_conntrack_ipv4,nf_nat,iptable_nat,ipt_MASQUERADE,xt_state
iptable_mangle          1576  0 
iptable_filter          1480  1 
ip_tables              17170  3 iptable_filter,iptable_mangle,iptable_nat
x_tables               16914  9 ip_tables,iptable_filter,iptable_mangle,iptable_nat,ipt_MASQUERADE,xt_state,xt_limit,ipt_LOG,xt_tcpudp
cpufreq_ondemand        6252  2 
powernow_k8            12747  0 
mperf                   1171  1 powernow_k8
freq_table              2475  2 powernow_k8,cpufreq_ondemand
lp                      9787  0 
ppdev                   5958  0 
parport_pc             19423  0 
parport                31427  3 parport_pc,ppdev,lp
fuse                   66626  9 
fglrx                4607476  83 
usbhid                 35615  0 
hid                    82876  1 usbhid
btusb                  11676  2 
bluetooth             151679  23 btusb,bnep,rfcomm
video                  11378  0 
processor              25592  3 powernow_k8
thermal                 7983  0 
snd_hda_codec_idt      55294  1 
brcmsmac              534140  0 
cordic                  1065  1 brcmsmac
thermal_sys            14578  3 thermal,processor,video
crc8                    1104  1 brcmsmac
brcmutil                3531  1 brcmsmac
mac80211              227731  1 brcmsmac
cfg80211              169025  2 mac80211,brcmsmac
dell_laptop            10592  0 
k10temp                 2843  0 
sdhci_pci              10812  0 
snd_hda_codec_hdmi     24057  1 
snd_hda_intel          23267  6 
snd_hda_codec          81925  3 snd_hda_intel,snd_hda_codec_hdmi,snd_hda_codec_idt
snd_hwdep     
i2c_piix4               8152  0 
hwmon                   1329  2 k10temp,thermal_sys
sdhci                  23109  1 sdhci_pci
mmc_core               77850  2 sdhci,sdhci_pci
rfkill                 15428  5 dell_laptop,cfg80211,bluetooth
r8169                  48922  0 
dell_wmi                1509  0 
mii                     3987  1 r8169
agpgart                27372  1 fglrx
serio_raw               4389  0 
dcdbas                  5416  1 dell_laptop
sparse_keymap           3016  1 dell_wmi
evdev                   9574  9 
battery                11171  0 
ac                      3331  0 
snd_pcm                72864  4 snd_hda_codec,snd_hda_intel,snd_hda_codec_hdmi,snd_pcm_oss
snd_page_alloc          7081  2 snd_pcm,snd_hda_intel
snd_timer              18798  2 snd_pcm,snd_seq
snd                    57796  20 snd_timer,snd_pcm,snd_hwdep,snd_hda_codec,snd_hda_intel,snd_hda_codec_hdmi,snd_hda_codec_idt,snd_mixer_oss,snd_pcm_oss,snd_seq_device,snd_seq,snd_seq_oss
i2c_core               19978  1 i2c_piix4
wmi                     8403  1 dell_wmi
soundcore               5474  3 snd
button                  4529  1 fglrx
loop                   18192  0 

those logs, I hate to say this, but they are really beyond my reading capability, I have no idea what I'm looking at.

[mimosa]

If rebooting is usually successful, that suggests some sort of hardware problem whereby a given component (video card? memory?) doesn't turn itself on properly in a "cold start". In terms of the system itself, drivers, configuration, and so on, there should be no difference between booting and ... booting immediately after power off.

This is true even if it works with a different distro or OS - a slower (or just different) boot process may allow the component in question the extra half second or thirty seconds it needs. But maybe not.

You could try introducing a pause in the boot process (or to test, perhaps just press TAB or whatever in the bootloader, as though you were going to edit the settings, and wait a minute).

Taking out the memory card(s) and giving the business end a good clean with a rubber has solved similar problems for me in the past. Beware of static if you live in a dry climate.