[GRLUG] Newbie running into real headaches

[Raymond McLaughlin]

Benjamin Woolley wrote:
> Hi all-
> 
> I am attempting my first real linux installation, with the intended result
> of having a MythTV server to run the media in my house.
> 
> I have downloaded and installed the latest Fedora Core and updated it with
> YUM. Then things start to get flakey.
> 
> I was having segmentation faults when I was trung to install MythTV, and
> now
> it has gotten to the point where I cannot even boot into Linux anymore. I
> get the following message during the boot process, and it just keeps
> cycling
> through the boot after that.
> 
> "kernel panic - not syncing  pci dma memory would be corrupted"

This error sounds like you might benefit from adding "nodma" to your
boot string, at least until you get this sorted out.

To do this you will need to reboot to the grub menu (list of OSs) and
press <Esc> to exit any pretty graphical grub shell you might be in.
Once you are to a text based grub menu use the cursor keys to move to
the OS selection that you want to run and press 'e' (for edit). This
will give you the three lines or so that define that boot selection.
Move, again with the up/down arrow key, to the line defining you kernel
and it's parameters. Once on this line again press 'e' (for edit) and
move the cursor to the place on the line where the kernel file is
declared, and type in, just after it, "nodma" making sure there is a
blank space before and after. Then press <Enter> to "save" (for this
session) the new boot line. And then type "b" and <Enter> to boot.

In a situation like yours, just getting a different error message is
considered progress. If this does work you could add the "nodma"
statement to your /boot/grub/menu.lst file, but with DMA turned off your
disk accesses will be very slow. It's better to find the root cause of
the problem and fix it. This fix is to get you into the system so you
can fix it.

I hope this helps
Raymond McLaughlin

> Being a windows guy in my former life, I have no idea where to look to fix
> this problem. At first I thought it might be a corrupted memory stick. I
> have 2x 512 sticcks, so I popped one out and tried to boot. I got the same
> result, so I tried it with the other, and unfortunately got the same thing.
> Am I barking up the wrong tree with regards to a hardware issue? The
> hardware ran fine for nearly 3 years under XP.
> 
> Any help you might suggest would be greatly appreciated. I really don't
> want
> to scrap Linux and go back to M$ if I can avoid it.

P.S.
It is common for new Linux users to go through a couple of "practice
installs" before they get one working just the way they want. There is a
learning curve, but it is worth the effort.

RSM


> Thanks!