Salix Forums

coyotl wrote:A little weird perhaps that the UBCD will not boot on this hardware? Would think they used low level code
for this that would boot on anything?
If there is a DOS or Freedos based repair CD and that will not boot either them maybe the hw must be faulty?

http://www.hirensbootcd.org/download/

Hiren's boot CD -if one of the old versions of this could be found and it does not work it must be hw fault.

junqueman wrote:

coyotl wrote:A little weird perhaps that the UBCD will not boot on this hardware? Would think they used low level code
for this that would boot on anything?
If there is a DOS or Freedos based repair CD and that will not boot either them maybe the hw must be faulty?

http://www.hirensbootcd.org/download/

Hiren's boot CD -if one of the old versions of this could be found and it does not work it must be hw fault.

I do appreciate the thought, but all other indications are the hardware is functional. I now have 2 optical drives in the AMD K6-III box: a DVD read-only, and a CD R/W. Both drives behave the same for each CD I've tried. (Obviously I can only try to boot DVDs in the DVD drive.) And you've probably seen the list of distros that I've had no trouble booting from CD. A Windows 98 CD boots without a problem as well. Also, the other machine, the AMD K6-2, has exactly the same behavior in terms of which CDs will and will not boot including the UBCD. As westms had said, one might then conclude there is a problem with the CDs. However, they all boot OK on a newer machine with a Pentium 4 CPU, or in a VM on a contemporary Macbook. So from all the distros I've attempted, I've pretty much concluded at this point there is a compatibility issue with certain versions (IIRC 4.06, 4.07, at least) of Isolinux, and also probably certain versions of the kernel, with either the BIOS, or CPUs, or both, in the AMD K6 machines.

I have another data point: I was almost successful in running and installing antiX-16-b5-386-full, the latest (as of a couple of weeks ago, anyway) beta of antiX, from the live CD. I was able to get it to boot to a text-mode installer on the AMD K6-III. (I did not try the K6-2 but I'm quite confident at this point that the results would be the same). After installation it wouldn't boot, but I was able to make edits to /boot/grub/menu.lst so that it would, but again, only into a text/terminal mode. The same live CD booted to the GUI desktop on a VM, and also installed fine in the VM (i.e., boots successfully to the desktop without any edits to menu.lst).

westms wrote:
Either, the bootloader software requires the functionality of the feature identifier CMOV, but the CPU is not built with it, or the BIOS is faulty. The former seems more likely to me.

With Salix Xfce 14.2beta1 (32-bit, i586), gapan has provided a version, that could run on the CPUs AMD K6-2 and AMD K6-3D+ when all other non-supported CPU features were also off. An experiment with this beta distribution would bring clarity. Better you wait until the final release, you save one DVD.

Windows 98 does not require the questionable CPU features, because that runs on much older computers.
The same goes for antiX-16-b5-386-full, I think. The 386 suggests that it is running on the same CPU, so, theoretically, on any newer CPU architectures. Since you can edit /boot/grub/menu.lst, the operating system is running yet. What happens then? Can you see how the X server is trying out unsuccessfully? Or are error messages visible, because of missing video driver. What messages are in /var/log/Xorg.0.log? Probably missing a suitable graphics driver, which you can possibly obtain. Perhaps the kernel is not configured for this graphics.

Also, I can not say what effects the virtual machine has. Never used KVM. ISOLINUX needs some functions of a PC BIOS. Is this emulated by the virtual machine?

Booting on a different hardware in VM to test out ISOLINUX or BIOS problems, is in my opinion quite worthless. You might use the CD to boot directly on the Macbook, to see if it works. But, this "Open Firmware" is UEFI firmware and probably works in UEFI native mode, then you need to switch to a BIOS-like mode. I would leave it alone.

junqueman wrote:I mentioned in my preceding post that I was able to complete installation of Salix 14.1 (Fluxbox) on a third, previously untried, machine of similar vintage to the other 2 machines I had been using. This machine uses an AMD K6-3D 350 MHz CPU. I was able to boot from the CD using the huge.s kernel (which could not be successfully done with the other 2 machines). I did not install LILO, because it has given me problems previously, so I was going to install grub using the instructions at viewtopic.php?p=16546. So after installation I re-booted from the Salix installation CD by entering this at the "boot:" prompt: huge.s root=/dev/sda1 rdinit= ro.
All was good until I got a dialog box telling me "Failed to start the X server (your graphical interface). It is likely that it is not set up correctly. Would you like to view the X server output to diagnose the problem?"

To which I replied "Yes". This is the output that was displayed:

Initializing built-in extension DR12
Loading extension GLX
(EE)
Fatal server error:
(EE) no screens found (EE)
(EE)
Please consult the The X.Org Foundation support at http://wiki.x.org for help
(EE) Please also check the log file at "/car/log/Xorg.0.log for additional information.
(EE)
(EE) Server terminated with error (1) Closing log file.

Another dialog box appeared asking "Would you like to view the detailed X server output as well?" Here are the warnings and errors (only) from that:

sudo slapt-get --search xf86-video-sis

Section "Device"
	Identifier  "SiS 6326 VGA Display Adapter"
	Driver      "sis"
	Option      "NoAccel"   "1"
#	Option      "DRI"       "1"
EndSection

junqueman wrote:Disabling IRQ #10

junqueman wrote:I did not install LILO, because it has given me problems previously, [...]

westms wrote:Yes, a driver could not be found or is not installed.
Try:

Code: Select all

sudo slapt-get --search xf86-video-sis

If packet xf86-video-sis is not installed, install it and reboot. (man slapt-get)

If installed, do a ls /usr/lib/xorg/modules/drivers and look for the files:
sis_drv.la
sis_drv.so

If existing, then it becomes more complicated: Add a file with a name like 50-device-sis6326.conf to /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d
The content could be:

Code: Select all

Section "Device"
	Identifier  "SiS 6326 VGA Display Adapter"
	Driver      "sis"
	Option      "NoAccel"   "1"
#	Option      "DRI"       "1"
EndSection

and reboot. Can not tell if this is good enough. Maybe you still need a Monitor and a Screen section, too. But for a first try...

And to this

junqueman wrote:I did not install LILO, because it has given me problems previously, [...]

I want to say: This is not a good idea, because if you look for an error, then you do not change many things at once. Which problem with LILO might have been that?

junqueman wrote:Thanks once again, westms, for the assistance. The sis driver was not installed, so I installed it per your directions. After reboot, this got me a little farther. The graphical login screen attempted to come up and was visible for an instant, then it immediately disappeared. This happened several times, and then the following text was displayed: "The display has been shut down about 6 times in the last 90 seconds. It is likely that something bad is going on. Waiting for 2 minutes before trying again on display :0." 2 minutes was enough for me to verify from command line that the sis_dv.la and sis_dv.so files were now present in directory /usr/lib/xorg/modules/drivers (as they should be), but not long enough for me to create a new file per your suggestion in /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d (I need to refresh my memory on how to use an editor that works without graphics, and I'm not a fast typist). Is there a way I can abort the X server from the command line to give me time to try things?

westms wrote: No idea what you've done there. I wrote, you could install the package. If the package is installed, the files in question are present. The program call slapt-get --filelist xf86-video-sis should show the files sis_drv.la and sis_drv.so .

Of course, you can terminate the X server, kill him. Or reboot up in runlevel 1 or 3, then you can work in peace.

And read the manpage: man sis.

Editors for terminal: nano, vi/vim/elvis, joe, jed/emacs. nano is already installed. For Real Men: ed.

junqueman wrote:As far as booting up in run level 1 or 3, I don't know what that means, or how to make that happen. Remember, I'm a noob.

junqueman wrote:Using nano I created the file you suggested, invoking the sis driver with the "NoAccel" option. I am now greeted with a stable login screen and desktop. Progress! There are some things that don't work properly;

junqueman wrote:the most annoying one is that Firefox appears not to launch, or crashes before any window appears.

junqueman wrote:Another problem is that when in LX terminal I cannot see the text I have typed until after I hit "Enter."

junqueman wrote:Thirdly, the display doesn't refresh properly after drawing a window - horizontal and vertical lines are left on the "wallpaper" and in parts of open windows. But this is farther than I've gotten with Salix on this vintage of hardware to date.

Section "ServerFlags"
	Option 		"DontZap"		"off"
#	Option		"DontZoom"
	Option		"BlankTime"      "0"
	Option		"StandbyTime"    "0"
	Option		"SuspendTime"    "0"
	Option		"OffTime"        "0"
EndSection

Section "Files"
	ModulePath   "/usr/lib/xorg/modules"

	FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/local"
#	FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/TTF"    # default
	FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/OTF"
#	FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/Type1"  # default
#	FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/misc"   # default
	FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/CID"
#	FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/75dpi/:unscaled"   # default
#	FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/100dpi/:unscaled"  # default
#	FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/75dpi"     # default
#	FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/100dpi"    # default
#	FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/cyrillic"  # default

#	RGBPath      "/usr/share/X11/rgb"         # rgb.txt # obsolete
EndSection

Section "Module"
	Load        "dbe"  	# Double buffer extension  # default
	Load        "extmod" # Okay, as long DGA extension is disabled

	SubSection  "extmod"
		Option    "omit xfree86-dga"  # don't initialise the DGA extension
	EndSubSection

	Load        "type1"
	Load        "freetype"
	Load        "glx"  # default
EndSection

Section "Extensions"
	Option	"Composite"          "Enable"  # (RENDER acceleration)
EndSection

junqueman wrote:I would like to identify what is different in this hardware which allows "huge.s" to boot whereas the other AMD K6-III would not. However, the inxi command isn't recognized.