Gary Hennigan wrote:
I figured out the floppy boot for memtest86.bin. It's running now (wall time == 1:12:24 elapsed). I am currently on test #7 of ??? and have no errors. I assume that it's at least nothing obviously wrong with the RAM."Jamin W.Collins" <jcollins@asgardsrealm.net> writes:On Wed, 12 Jun 2002 16:51:06 -0400 "Tom Allison" <tallison@tacocat.net> wrote:I got a really interesting one. I am running a stock K7 kernel from woody.I recall seeing such things as cramfs, VFS, and initrd during the boot sequence.I upgraded my RAM to replace the current 128M to 768MNow, when I boot it panics with a message that VFS can't mount the root device at 03:02.If I return to the original RAM, it's fine.Have you tested the new memory? Memtest86 is a great tool for doing just this.And there's a Debian package for it, memtest86! I have to agree with Jamin here. While it's not impossible that it's a software issue, it's much more likely to be a problem with your memory or with one of the memory sockets on your motherboard. memtest86 is a stand-alone memory tester (you boot into it) and it does a thorough test that should point out a hardware problem. If memtest86 shows an error you can try inserting the memory sticks one at a time and if each one individually checks out it's probably a problem with your motherboards memory sockets. The BIOS memory test is practically worthless, BTW. It won't catch 90% of memory errors. Gary
I am beginning to wonder if there is a problem with the cramfs/vfs/initrd implimentation in the debian woody package. It is unlikely that this problem might be caught prior to this as I don't know how many other people have upgraded RAM under woody lately.
But it's the only thing that I can think of that might be a contributor. The RAM boots the debian 2.2 install CD. The RAM is (so far) testing OK.The failure during boot is where the VFS fails to find the device at the address/location specified. I was finding some comments about a potential problem with VFS and boot block size or something like that. It was brief and I wasn't really understanding it all. But is there someplace that I can look for any configuration/options on these?
Alternatively, I'll have to create a stand alone kernel and see if I can get it to boot sans cramfs/vfs/initrd. But that might set me back and bit.
I'm planning, upon successful completion of these tests, to reboot the PC and post as many lines of the boot process as I can stand to type that seem relevant.
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