I'm trying to install Gentoo on a Dell Latitude D266XT laptop (PII 266Mhz). Booting from the 2004.3 Universal LiveCD, I hit F2 to get the console but that last two lines displayed are: >> Mounting Filesystems >> Attempting to mount CD:- /newroot/dev/cdroms/cdrom0 the system never gets past this point. Reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: 1. Boot Dell Latitude D266XT laptop from 2004.3 Universal LiveCD 2. Boot default "gentoo" kernel, with or without no____ flags. 3. Press F2 to see system console and monitor boot status Actual Results: Hear cdrom drive spinning up and spinning down endlessly, but boot progress never progresses past: >> Mounting Filesystems >> Attempting to mount CD:- /newroot/dev/cdroms/cdrom0 Expected Results: LiveCD should have mounted cdrom and continued booting LiveCD. I tried passing all the noapic, noacpi, nodetect, etc options but they had no effect. I tried booting a different from machine from this LiveCD but it worked fine. I tried booting this system with another freshly burned 2004.3 LiveCD, but it hung at the same point. I tried Gentoo 2004.2 Universal LiveCD and it boots up and works fine, unlike the 2004.3 which has never worked on this machine.
Are you using 2004.3 or 2004.3-r1?
I am using 2004.3-r1.
Try "gentoo noapic acpi=off nosmp nofirewire nodetect" and let me know if it boots.
I just tried it, but unfortunately those arguments had no effect. It hangs at the same spot.
I did some more research and discovered that 2004.2 boots a 2.4 kernel by default, where 2004.3 boots a 2.6 kernel and that seems to be the reason why 2004.2 works and 2004.3 doesn't on my laptop. I just attempted to boot the "smp" kernel on the 2004.2 livecd, which is a 2.6 kernel, and that resulted in the same hang at "Attempting to mount CD...". When I tried booting the smp (2.6) kernel on the 2004.2 livecd, I used these options: "smp nosmp noapic nofirewire nodetect" I was unable to use the "apci=off" option as this caused the machine to go to a black/blank screen and hang), nevertheless, something about the 2.6 kernel seems to be the cause of the hang during the boot of the livecd(s). Any suggestions on how to proceed? Is there anything else I can try to determine the root cause of the problem?
Unfortunately, we are not switching back to a 2.4 kernel. I can get someone to produce a non-SMP 2.6 kernel for you to test, but we're pretty much stuck, as we've decided to move forward with 2.6 kernels and udev as defaults not only on the LiveCD, but also the distribution as a whole.
Whoa, I don't think you should switch back to 2.4 either. :) I'm just trying to figure out why 2004.3 livecd wont boot for me. Now I've narrowed it down to a kernel 2.6-specific issue. I would like to further troubleshoot to find out why 2.6 hangs where it does when booting the livecd, and to hopefully help identify and fix the problem. Unfortunately I do not know how to proceed toward this goal. Is there any way to find out what exactly is happening when the machine hangs at "Attempting to mount CD..." during boot? That might be a start. I'll make a custom 2004.3-based livecd if I have to do that to enable verbose output or something, I just needs some tips on what to do.
I, too, have encountered this problem. My system is a unbranded PII 400MHz. In particular, my CD-ROM drive is: MITSUMI CD-ROM FX320S !B I swapped out the CD drive with a newer CD burner (HL-DT-ST CD-RW GCE-8160B), and the boot worked fine. My guess: there is some issue between the 2004.3-r1 LiveCD and older CD-ROM drives (the original bug report also indicated older hardware) that did not exist with the 2004.2 LiveCD (I have not personally tested that CD). On the surface this appears similar to a problem I sometimes encountered installing Fedora Core on (different) old hardware. I never discovered a solution, but I never tried very hard either.
That is quite interesting indeed. It doesn't help me much, but it does fill in one more piece of the puzzle. JR: what kind of CDROM is it?
I am using the cdrom module that came with my laptop, it's a Dell part#89314 20x slimline cdrom drive.
I have the same problem with a Pentium IV with Asus P4B533 mainboard and LG CD-RW/DVD-Rom with Atapi interface. I don't know the type, maybe GCC-4120B.
After tons of more research I came across this post on the Gentoo forums: http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic.php?t=262270#1846476 This person is describing a laptop almost identical to mine, so I too tried booting the livecd with: "gentoo ide=nodma" and sure enough it now boots fine. I verified that I can boot 2004.3 as well as the smp/2.6 kernel on 2004.2 if I use the ide=nodma argument. I guess that means the problem was my buggy cdrom drive, not a bug with Gentoo or the livecd. Sorry. :(
Not a problem. That is actually why we have that option listed on the help screen of the LiveCD. I'm glad you got it worked out.
