Need help installing linux on an HP laptop

John Kohler jkohler2 at earthlink.net
Thu Nov 7 21:07:52 PST 2002


Hi,
I wrote coments in your text below:
ME wrote:

>It is possible that the NIC is one of the devices that is not being probed
>by the OS during startup.
>
>Things to check:
>after booting, log in as root and type:
># ifconfig eth0
>
I got the following:
eth0  Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:C0:9F:15:38:2B
        BROADCAST MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
        RX packets: 0 errors:0 dropped: 0 overruns:0 frame:0
        TS packets: 4 errrors:0 dropped:0  overruns:0 carrier:0
        collisions: 0 txqueuelen:100
        RX bytes: 0 (0.0 b) TX bytes:2360 (2.3 Kb)
        Interrupt:11 base address 0xf000

>if you get nothing, then there is no diriver loaded/associated with the
>hardware.
>
>if you see something, then please report what you see.
>
>Also, are you sure you only have one NIC? To make sure the OS is only
>seeing one NIC you may also want to try:
># ifconfig eth1
>(No need to try this if the first ifcoinfig fot eth0 gives you nothing)
>
>Is the NIC (Network Interface Card) an actual card (PCMCIA) or integrated
>  
>
My guess is that it is integrated since I have nothing in the external 
pcmcia slot..



>If the ifconfig do not show info about your NIC(s), then as root, try
># lspci
>
(I must note, that I cannot type just "lspci" alone but need to preceed 
it as follows for some reason:  
#/sbin/lspci  

I remember doing that on my old desktop linux machine but don't remember 
why.

Anyway here are the responses when I typed in the command at the root level:

00:00:0 Host bridge: ATI technologies Inc: Unknown device cab0 (rev 13)
00:01:0 PCI bridge: ATI Technologies Inc: Unknown device 700f (rev 01)
00:02:0 USB Controller: Acer Laboratories Inc. [ALi] USB 1.1 controller 
(rev 03)
00:06:0 Multimedia audio Controller: Acer Laboratories Inc. [ALi] M5451 
PCI AC-Link
             Controller Audio Device (rev 02)
00:07:0 ISA bridge: Acer Laboratories Inc[ALi]M1533 PCI to ISA Bridge 
[Alladin IV]
00:08.0 Modem: Acer Laboratories Inc [ALi] M5457 AC-Link Modem Interface 
Controller
00:0a.0 CardBus bridge: 02 Micro, Inc: Unknown device 6972
00:10:0 IDE interface: Acer Labortories Inc [ALi] M5229 IDE (rev c4)
00:11:0 Bridge: Acer Laboratories Inc [ALi] M7101 PMU
00:12:0 Ethernet controller: National Semiconductor Corporation DP83815 
(Macphyter)
             Ethernet Controller
01:05:0 VGA compatible controller : Ati Technologies inc: Unknown device 
4336


>If the NIC is integrated, one of the items listed will likely be it.
>If the NIC is pcmcia, then you will likely need pcmcia-cs running before
>it will work, and we can look into that later...
>
>also, after you boot your machine with:
>boot: linux nomce
>can you check to see if the pcmcia-cs is running?
>
># ps -auxw | grep "cardmgr"
>
What I got was:

root    778 0.0  0.5 1496 644 ?       S 20:45     0:00 /sbin/cardmgr
root   1183 0.0 0.5 1760 tty1          S 21:09     0:00 grep cardmgr

>If you see something like:
>
>root       287  0.0  0.1  1392  636 ?        S    Nov06   0:00
>
The form of the response appears similar but the content looks differeent.

>/sbin/cardmgr -C config-2.4
>
> after using the "nomce" that may be a good sign
>
Thank you, for your time and attention.   I hope my report  above is 
understandable.

John

>Thanks!
>-ME
>
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>
>John Kohler said:
>  
>
>>Dear ME,
>>Thank you for your reply.  I am not advanced enough to understand all of
>> your discussion.
>>
>>However, I have found and tried a boot parameter that can be passed to
>>the kernel (now using Red Hat 7.3) at start-up time  from the hard disk
>>loading process:
>>
>>boot: linux nomce
>>
>>I understand that possibly the kernel panic shown below is not a "fatal"
>> one and can be
>>avoided by adding the above command to the kernel to ignore minor
>>Machine Checks.
>>
>>I am concerned that I am too heavily disabling the kernel.  First,
>>during installation,
>>
>>boot: linux nopcmcia
>>
>>and second, as shown above.
>>
>>With these tactics, I can complete the boot proces, get to a user prompt
>> and/or a root prompt, where I can login at either level. After that, I
>>am successful with "startx" and the current of GNOME   begins
>>successfully.
>>
>>Now, I am facing the same challenge that I did with my first attempt
>>using an NIC and trying to activate the "eth0" LAN interface.
>>
>>I am seeing the familiar "network unreachable" on the command-line
>>responses.
>>
>>Thanks again for your response and discussion below.
>>
>>John
>>
>>ME wrote:
>>
>>    
>>
>>>John Kohler said:
>>>
>>>
>>>      
>>>
>>>>Hello Everybody,
>>>>
>>>>I appreciate all your help when I installed Red Hat on my Desktop PC
>>>>several years ago.
>>>>
>>>>I just got an HP laptop, and have new challenges:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>        
>>>>
>>>>>I am using Red Hat 7.2 linux.
>>>>>
>>>>>This is an HP pavilion ze4101.
>>>>>
>>>>>I formatted the hard drive when I received it. I selected from the
>>>>>BIOS menu the option to load from the CD ROM drive, and when given
>>>>>the
>>>>>boot prompt: I passed the "no pcmcia" value to the installer kernel.
>>>>>
>>>>>The graphic installation proceeded well, and I chose all the default
>>>>>options during the installation, except the option to create a boot
>>>>>disk as the laptop has no floppy drive.
>>>>>
>>>>>Upon restart, the kernel reports its prgress on the laptop screen as
>>>>>follows:
>>>>>
>>>>>296k init, 0k highmem
>>>>>
>>>>>Dentry cache hash table entries: 16384 (order: 5, 131072 bytes) Inode
>>>>>cache hash table entries:8192 (order: 4, 65536 bytes)
>>>>>Mount-cache hash table enties: 2048 (order: 2, 16384 bytes)
>>>>>Buffer cache hash table entries: 4096 (order: 2, 16384 bytes)
>>>>>Page-cache hash table entries: 32768 (order: 5, 131072 bytes)
>>>>>CPU: L1 I cache: 64K (64 bytes/line, D cache 64K (64 bytes/line) CPU:
>>>>>L2 Cache: 256K(64 bytes/line)
>>>>>Intel machine check architecture supported.
>>>>>Intel machine check reporting enabled on CPU#0.
>>>>>CPU: AMD mobile AMD Athlon (tm) SP 1500+ stepping 00
>>>>>Enabling fast FPU save and restore... done.
>>>>>Checking 'hlt' instruction... OK.
>>>>>POSIX conformance testing by UNIFIX
>>>>>mtrr: v1.40 (20010327) Richard Gooch (rgooch at atnf.csiro.au)
>>>>>mtrr: detected mtrr type: Intel
>>>>>PCI: PCI BIOS revision 2.10 entry at Oxfd87b, last bus=2
>>>>>PCI: Using configuration type 1
>>>>>PCI: Probing PCI hardware
>>>>>PCI: Using IRQ router ALI [10b9/1533] at 00:07.0
>>>>>isapnp: Scanning for PnP cards...
>>>>>CPU 0: Machine Check Exception: 0000000000000007
>>>>>Bank 3: b40000000000083b at 00000001fc0003b3
>>>>>Kernel panic: Unable to continue
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>          
>>>>>
>>>>Any Ideas?
>>>>
>>>>John Kohler
>>>>Daly City, CA
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>        
>>>>
>>>Eject all pcmcia cards.
>>>In BIOS settings disable all non-essential hardware (such as USB). Try
>>>rebooting again.
>>>
>>>If still fails, and report is accurate, look in /etc/rc?.d to see what
>>>starts after isapnp script (you may need to grep for this word in these
>>>dirs and/or /etc/init.d (or where rh puts its startup scripts.)
>>>
>>>Temporarily disable the startup script that runs through the "pcmcia"
>>>card services (if any) and if not, then disable isapnp and the service
>>>that immediately follows it by number (higher numbers in /etc/rc?.d/
>>>links that start with "S" are started as listed from low to high.
>>>
>>>(isapnp and pcmcia-cs are suspect from where I sit in the data
>>>provided. If neither of these, then the started service immediately
>>>after isapnp.)
>>>
>>>This kind of message seems to happen in HP Laptops that have certain
>>>(non-standard) ranges of memory BIOS that should be probed while
>>>probing the "standard ones" can lead to the above problems when the
>>>hardware using the "standard address" does not behave as it should,
>>>oras the kernel would expect it to.
>>>
>>>Fixes often include bypassing the probing done by pcmcia-cs and/or
>>>isapnp by skipping these at startup (edit the associated scripts in
>>>single user mode to not start (simple "exit 0" near the top of the
>>>startup script should work), save, sync and reboot.
>>>
>>>If you can reboot, then try to isolate which one is causing the
>>>failure. copy the script to a new file, edit out the "exit 0" and rtun
>>>the copy as root. If the kernel bails again, you have found a cause.
>>>
>>>If pcmcia-cs, then uninstall pcmcia-cs and install the latest
>>>pcmcia-cs. I the latest package available is still busted, you can get
>>>and compile your own from source at sourceforge.
>>>
>>>If that does not work, you can try to locate the range of BIOS that
>>>*should* be scanned and make sure the pcmcia config files include those
>>>as resources to scan and remove other bios ranges that should not be.
>>>
>>>If this is PCMCIA-CS, I worked with coders on sourceforge way back when
>>>with it as a bug report and worked through a fix for the HP laptop we
>>>were using. After the fix was in place, all new pcmcia-cs from
>>>sourceforge worked great with the laptop.
>>>
>>>For my part int he fix, I actually installed MS Windows and found the
>>>ranges of memory used by PCMCIA PCI bridge, and explicitly told the
>>>pcmcia-cs to only use these ranges and no others. Other chnages were
>>>required too (I dont recall them all) but they all related to
>>>limitingthe resources probed by pcmica-cs on startup. This part is a
>>>bit of work, so try other ideas first.
>>>
>>>Please let us know if you have questions about any parts listed above
>>>or need anything described in more detail. :-)
>>>
>>>Followup on success/failure, and partial success is great. Your
>>>documented and included description of the problem is very good and
>>>includes what is needed to start to fix this.
>>>
>>>-ME
>>>
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>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>      
>>>
>
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