Troubleshooting the Boot Process

If you have problems during the boot process, such as the kernel hangs during the boot process, the kernel doesn't recognize peripherals you actually have, or drives are not recognized properly, the first things to check are the boot parameters. They can be found by pressing F1 when booting from the rescue disk.

Often, problems can be solved by removing add-ons and peripherals and then booting again. Internal modems, sound cards, and Plug-n-Play devices are especially problematic.

Tecras and other notebooks, and some non-portables fail to flush the cache when switching on the A20 gate, which is provoked by bzImage kernels but not by zImage kernels. If your computer suffers from this problem, you'll see a message during boot saying A20 gating failed. In this case, you'll have to use the `tecra' boot images.

If you still have problems, please submit a bug report. Send an email to [email protected]. You must include the following as the first lines of the email:

Package: boot-floppies

Version: version

Make sure you fill in version with the version of the boot-floppies set that you used. If you don't know the version, use the date you downloaded the floppies, and include the distribution you got them from (e.g., ``stable'' or ``frozen'').

You should also include the following information in your bug report:

architecture

i386

model

your general hardware vendor and model

memory

amount of RAM

scsi

SCSI host adapter, if any

cd-rom

CD-ROM model and interface type, i.e., ATAPI

network card

network interface card, if any

pcmcia

details of any PCMCIA devices

Depending on the nature of the bug, it also might be useful to report the disk model, the disk capacity, and the model of video card.

In the bug report, describe what the problem is, including the last visible kernel messages in the event of a kernel hang. Describe the steps you performed that put the system into the problem state.