I am trying to install Gentoo on my old laptop (Fujitsu 435 DX) which is a Pentium 133 or 166 MMX (don't remember exactly) with 48MB RAM and 1GB disk. However, I am just unable to make it boot from the Gentoo LiveCD any flavor of 2004.1 or 2004.2. I even tried 2004.2-r1 minimal. However, I can boot the Fedora Core 1 install CD without a glitch. I have no message at all, it just skip the CD and try the next peripheral (HD). Reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: 1.Well, get a Fujitsu 435 DX 2.Insert CD 3.Boot Actual Results: Skip the CD-ROM and boot from the HD. Expected Results: Boot from the CD. It is working with the Fedora Core 1 CD.
I have the same problem on my PentiumIII. Knoppix, SuSE, Fedora and Debian are booting from CD. Gentoo does not ("Searching for boot record on CD-ROM... failed"). My hardware is a about four years old - Pentium III 667 MHz - 256 MB RAM - Toshiba DVD-ROM - LG CD/RW-Burner THe CD does not boot from both drives.
Dennis: use the -r1 ISO at /experimental/x86/livecd/x86 on your local Gerntoo mirror. Daniel: I'm still trying to determine what could be the problem.
I have a similar problem on my 6 month old Epia M-II system, Award BIOS v6.00PG, Sony CRX830E DVD/CD-RW combo drive: the 2004.2 minimal LiveCD won't boot, but the 2004.1 universal LiveCD ran fine, as do Knoppix, Fedora, GeeXboX. I've now burnt 3 of the damn things and md5sum'ed them on another Linux box to make sure, and it looks OK. I'll try the 2004.2-r1 - only on the 4th mirror I looked at? - and let you know. Even if that works for me, I'm happy to burn a few more CDs testing things if you like. I just had a hard disc crash so I'm installing from scratch :-(
2004.2-r1 works for me. Please can whatever the difference was be noted and definitely be applied to future LiveCDs? Anyone who wants a 2004.2 (original) just shout, I've 3 of 'em :-)
Actually, we were planning on releasing all future LiveCD's like the failed Minimal 2004.2 LiveCD and when it fails for some people, telling them that it is a sign that they shouldn't be running Gentoo anyway... *GRIN* Yeah, we've fixed it on the future LiveCD's. At least, we think we did. The problem lies in the fact that we don't know what caused the minimal LiveCD to not work on some machines. We built everything from the same sources, same snapshot, on the exact same machine. That was the only time we've ever seen an ISO not boot properly. Call it gremlins, call it reiserfs being a dirty little monkey... whatever it was I now have a *very* long list of people willing to test the new LiveCD releases to ensure this doesn't happen again. Also, John... your problem is *not* the same as this bug, but instead the same as 58821. I beleive that Daniel's problem is different, as he had it on 2004.1 also.
Yes, I'm sure you do intend to make sure future releases run OK, it's just that all too often patches get lost and lessons forgotten, particularly when new versions of packages come along from upstream. Anyway: no, you're right, it's not the same problem as the original reporter, but from what the followup said it sounded similar, which is why I wrote "I have a similar problem"... I hadn't found bug #58821, as it didn't mention the word "livecd". I suspect it's a related issue nonetheless, to do with the size of the boot image. Finally, I find that install-x86-minimal-2004.3-test1 boots correctly on my machine (the one that 2004.2 original didn't), and I am grateful that it includes the Bad Block Replacement module (dm-bbr.ko) for EVMS, for which many thanks, and please keep it :-)
Is there anything I can do to help with this issue? John is talking about something newer than 2004.2-r1 minimal, is it worth testing this, if yes, where can I found the file? It is a long time since I looked at this problem, my Fujitsu is still waiting for its Gentoo... I am not a CD expert, so, what can make the BIOS not recognized the CD as bootable media? I guess a specific record must exist on the CD, can I do something to examine if it is actually where it should be and contains what it is supposed to?
Daniel, the more recent 2004.3-test1 is in the same place as 2004.2-r1, i.e. /experimental/x86/livecd/x86 on your local Gentoo mirror; I got mine from http://ftp-stud.fht-esslingen.de/pub/Mirrors/gentoo/experimental/x86/livecd/x86/ If that still doesn't work, you could try making a Smart Boot Manager floppy (as suggested in the discussion around bug #58821) from http://btmgr.sourceforge.net/ Chris, I seem to recall there are at least two quite different ways of making CDs bootable, and I suspect that machines as old as Daniel's laptop will only support the older floppy-image method. If that's not how the LiveCD works, could it (without making things horrendously difficult)? Or could you incorporate a boot floppy image (perhaps something like Smart Boot Manager) and a copy of rawrite within the CD image? (Like Red Hat/Fedora do...)
John, will try latest boot image. However, the smart boot floppy trick won't work since I will need to swap the diskette drive and CD drive in the operation. And I don't think this old beast will support a hot-swap.
LiveCD image 2004.3-test1 doesn't work either. The Fujitsu 435-DX was sold around 1997. Is there anything in the CD technology that may have changed which prevent this boot CD to be recognized? Size of records? Number of tracks? Or anything else with the geometry?
Yes, as I say there are two formats for bootable CDs, it may be that your machine only supports "emulation" mode, where an image of a floppy disc is included on the CD. As far as I know the Gentoo LiveCDs are made with ISOLINUX, which only works in non-emulation mode. They *could* be made the other way, though. If I wasn't in the middle of trying to reinstall my Gentoo box, I'd have a go at it myself; maybe next week?
If it can be of any help, I downloaded the Knoppix ISO image yesterday and tested it with this laptop and it fails to boot, but it boots fine on my Thinkpad.
Does that laptop even support booting from CD?
No answer...
Yes the laptop supports booting from CD, the reporter said that Fedora Core 1 CDs boot OK. As I have noted, Gentoo uses ISOLINUX while FC1 uses SYSLINUX and has floppy images available, which suggests to me their CDs use emulation mode, unlike ISOLINUX. If someone can point me in the direction of the resources used to make Gentoo LiveCDs, I can try and produce an alternate (emulation mode) LiveCD for the reporter; it should just be a case of (i) making a floppy image with SYSLINUX, much like what's currently produced by ISOLINUX, and (ii) invoking mkisofs slightly differently.
Well, we use catalyst. Simply emerge catalyst and you should be good to go. Now, creating a CD with the emulation layer instead would probably just take the replacement of the cdtar file that we use with isolinux in it.
Well I'm afraid I haven't managed to make even a standard LiveCD with catalyst, never mind one with an emulation mode boot pattern. I did try to fathom catalyst but I didn't work it out. I must not be the hacker I thought I was :-(
The problem with using a floppy image like that is that it requires us to have floppy images. At current, we don't have any facility for doing this, and all attempts in the past have either died, or failed.
Well, if you could try out 2005.0's release. The main change is a newer version of isolinux, but we still are not using emulation mode, since we would have to switch to another boot loader, and we have been unable to do that just yet.
No response
