Boot problem

[Walt Dizzy]

After installing SuSE 8.1 on my nForce system, I get all the way to the end of the install, and a screen pops up that tells me to reboot the system. I press enter to reboot, and the initial screen pops up for boot. The bars on the left turn white one by one until the process stops with this error message:

kernel (hd 0,1)/boot/vmlinuz root=/dev/hda2 hdc=ide-scsi vga 791 3

[Linux-bzImage, setup=0x1400, size=0x10aab8]

Error 28: Selected item cannot fit into memory.

Grub version 0.92 (512K lower/523184K upper memory)

My system has an ASUS A77N266-C motherboard, a Leadtek Geforce 3 Ti 200 videocard, Maxtor 60 GB disk, Escalade 6200 RAID controller, and Siemans NIC.

Things I've tried so far:

Reinstalled SuSE without RAID and modem.
Reinstalled SuSE on RAID.
Used Manual install option in order to leave out drivers for a smaller kernel. No change in kernel size.
Reinstalled with APIC.
Tried booting from a tested floppy rescue disk set. Locks up with caps and numlock light flashing. Can't check boot log!

This set of SuSE install disks has been used successfully on another machine.

My next idea is to try Red Hat. Any other ideas?

[Mandarb1]

Are you sure root is on the right partition? My root is on hda7, but Im also dual booting...

[Walt Dizzy]

I think so. The error message is the same whether I install to a single disk with nothing else on it but Linux, or if I set up a dual boot system with Win2K. If I recall correctly, the root partition was on hda(1) before my last install attempt to the RAID array.

Thanks anyway.

I think that the error message is misleading. It indicates the kernel is just over 1 MB in size, and is too big for the system memory. There is 500 MB of memory in this computer, and if I recall correctly, Linux is not limited to low 20 bit-first 1MB?) memory. Can anyone confirm this?

Walt

[Chalnoth]

I had this problem too, but selecting LILO as the boot manager seems to work great. Haven't bothered to further troubleshoot the problem...

[Walt Dizzy]

Thanks, I will give this a try as soon as I can figure out how to do so.

[algida]

I have same problem,
I try to install RH 8.0 and there was same error.
I cant use LILO, because i linux on disk where are Win on first partiton. :-(
I'm instaling it two weeks.
Can you help me?
Ales

[Chalnoth]

Well, all I did was placed a 32MB boot partition at the front of the drive so I could use LILO just fine with my Linux partition after the first 8GB of space.

But, I had heard that that 8GB limitation was fixed in more recent versions. Have you tried it with RH 8.0, or did it just fail on previous versions?

[algida]

I tied to install Redhat 8.0 and Suse 8.1.
I cant do anything with firs partition, because there are Win Xp with many programs and data:-(.
Sorry for my English
Ales

[Chalnoth]

See if you can get your hands on Partition Magic. You should be able to do just about anything you want with that.

Barring that, if you really want Linux, you can just backup your essential data on a second partition, then wipe the Windows partition and put that little boot partition at the front of the drive. It's a big hassle, and not something I'd be willing to do right now, but it is an option.

[algida]

There are no other ways?
Only to use Lilo??
Sorry for stupid question.
ales

[Chalnoth]

Well, there probably is. I don't know it, though.

[Klaus-P]

" There are no other ways?
Only to use Lilo??"

Install the linux package "loadlin" under win or dos from your linux CD.
and do also copy a linux standard kernel image in the appropriate
windows directory
Then modify your "config.sys" file and the loadlin config file "linux.par"
and you will get a windows-linux startmenu whenever your computer boots.
Later you can also copy other linux kernels to the same place.

[Mandarb1]

I had a similar problem to this. But I was using GRUB. My ntloader didnt know where to boot anything. So I believe I used FDISK to set the active partition to my Windows partition and then in my boot.ini I gave an option to go into GRUB. After I did those two things everything worked. Im not sure how helpful this was but it might help. Im using SuSE 8.1 and GRUB 0.92-90. Maybe LILO messed up your master boot record and cant properly read which partition to boot first, but this is only speculation.

[Walt Dizzy]

Thanks for the suggestions.

I can't figure out how to use Lilo with SuSE. So I copied a friend's Red Hat 8.0 disks and installed. I selected Lilo as my boot loader, and the boot failed, it printed "LI" on the screen and stopped. I checked several times, and it always failed at the same point.

I reinstalled RH using Grub as my bootloader, and got pretty much the same message as before, ending with:

Error 28: Selected item cannot fit into memory.

I can use F5 and the "Linux Rescue" to boot my system, and I can change the root to the hard disk. In SuSE, I was able to boot from the install CD.

I have not been able to locate the boot log in Red Hat (maybe they call it by a different name?), so I uninstalled it. I plan to reinstall SuSE with Grub, and use the installer to boot into the hard disk, and check the boot log. Maybe I'll learn something there.

Thanks, Mandarb1. But at this point it doesn't seem like using the Windows bootloader to select Grub would fix anything. There does not seem to be any problem finding Grub. I'll think about it some more though.

Walt

[Mandarb1]

I googled a bit and went to the GRUB Manual (http://www.gnu.org/manual/grub-0.92/html_node/Stage2-errors.html) and found out a little more about what Error 28 means:

28 : Selected item cannot fit into memory
This error is returned if a kernel, module, or raw file load command is either trying to load its data such that it won't fit into memory or it is simply too big.

Here are some possible solutions:

http://mm.ilug-bom.org.in/pipermail/linuxers/Week-of-Mon-20020729/005620.html

http://www.mail-archive.com/bug-grub@gnu.org/msg06247.html

And I think it comes down to your motherboard and your BIOS.

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/history/33391

And the solution:

"UPDATE: grub .93 (from CVS) solved the boot issue."

And to download the .93 GRUB, it can be found here:

ftp://alpha.gnu.org/gnu/grub/

If that doesnt work, maybe try flashing your BIOS to a newer release?

[Walt Dizzy]

Thanks for the links, they are most informative!

I tried to download GNU Grub 0.93 about a week ago, but the download link was broken. So I tried using LILO instead, and pretty much duplicated the results that the folks in the linuxquestions forum got: it did not work for me either.

It sounds like the nForce chipset is possibly the problem, and the updated Grub will be my next effort.

Walt

[Walt Dizzy]

If anyone is interested:

Grub 0.93 did fix my boot problem. I had to learn how to do a make from the .tar.gz file, but everything did what it was supposed to. After I figured out I needed to install the compiler!

I did not try flashing the bios, there were two later model bios at ASUS's web site, but the list of fixes did not include Linux boot problems.

Walt

[AhBeeDoi]

I've upgraded to 0.93 but I have the same problem with my A7N266-VM. LILO works but I prefer GRUB.