Fwd: Linux Booting Problems

Fwd: Linux Booting Problems

[Anthony Gorecki]

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Hello,

This message was originally posted on the Vancouver Linux User's Group mailing 
list, but the problem has since been traced back to one of the RunIt 
executables.

I currently have a small network of servers running on a custom distribution
which focuses on being a minimalistic, secure base platform for servers and
workstations. The distribution has been extensively tested on Pentium 2, 3
and 4 systems, but for some reason failed to boot when I deployed it on a
Pentium 133 which was intended to be used as a NAT router. With an identical
hardware configuration, the same system will boot using RedHat 9 and will
boot into rescue mode from the RedHat 9 CD without problems.

The kernel will execute properly and successfully starts RunIt, though the 
program will instantly cycle through all the run levels and halt or reboot 
the system. After runit-init replaces itself with runit, it iterates through 
1, 2 and 3, but does not execute the file contents, regardless of whether 
they are shell scripts or compiled binaries.

As part of the troubleshooting process, I mounted the boot partition using the
RedHat 9 rescue system and was able to execute Bash, the RunIt programs and
all other programs without problems, which leads me to believe it is not a
segmentation fault error. The base kernel is set to use i386 CPU settings, 
therefore the only possible cause is that a library or dependency error is 
being generated as a result of using the older hardware configuration.

All libraries and programs were installed and compiled using generic settings
and should work on virtually all x86 architectures, but it's possible that
one or more of them may have automatically compiled to run on i686 systems
instead of i386 systems. Any suggestions which would help track
down this problem would be greatly appreciated.

For reference, here is the hardware configuration which fails to load:
	Pentium-S 133MHz CPU
	48MB EDO RAM
	6.4GB 7,200RPM HD (boot)
	500MB 5,400RPM HD (swap)
	DLink 10/100MB/s Fast Ethernet Adapter (VIA Rhine chipset)
	3Com 10MB/s EtherLink II Adapter (3Com 3c503 chipset)
	Generic CDROM drive, BIOS and graphics card

Thanks.


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Best Regards,
Anthony Gorecki
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