Porteus 3.1 boots to within sight of desktop then goes blank

[boombaby]

Here are a few problems to sort out. (So go for it!)

When I boot PORTEUS 3.1 Mate off DVD and choose boot Mate it goes through its startup procedure. It gets to text login screen, and continues to autoboot towards a GUI. Then screen goes dark(-er); a mouse appears (but has "mouse-trails"); the cursor turns to spinning blue "wait" disk; later then a desktop pops up for about 1/2 second (ie "looking out of a blue-tiled sewer pipe"), followed by the screen going even darker (to black) - then nothing works. Cannot get keyboard, mouse, alt consoles - nothing.

Notes
1.
If I intervene just prior to screen going dark (ie before mouse cursor) I can get CTRL. Then I can get alt console, login etc. Ten if I return to 1st console (at any time), then the system boot continues (ie screen goes dark followed by mouse cursor etc). Then I can flip back to alt console before that and still have control, but if I leave it I will lose control of system. If I return to 1st console the system will try to continue every time.

2.
When I get to alt console I note that I can press the num-lock, it's light will start, but then disengages. Same with CAPS-lock. Light won't stick.

3.
At kernel arg line I have tried "nomodeset", and mode settings without any changes. Tried VGA=ask but without a fix. Tried VGA=detect but it seems to have no effect. [VGA=xxx (ie a number, 788) will work for altering boot text.]

4.
My system is old. Noteable points are:- the graphics card is AGP SiS-6326; Monitor is LG Model-L196WTQ; CPU is Athlon 1GHz single-core. (I have no plans to change any of this right now because Mageia-5 installed on it without any problems, and works beautifully.)

5.
Porteus is not the only distro I have problems with, but is one of the few that won't get to a "live" setup. I am keen to try Porteus as a lightweight, stable, configurable, supported system. (However, I do NOT like to work at the CLI.)

6.
Yes, I can get to runlevel 3 but I'm not much good at repairing/re-configuring (because without sound "linux-system-knowledge" it's way too complex to muck around with).

Any thoughts?


Regards,

[Bogomips]

Welcome to Porteus.

When this sort of thing has happened to me on other distros, it has been because swap files have not been used. If there is insufficient ram then swap files are needed.

[boombaby]

Interesting question. (See; I was thinkin' "graphics".)

OK.

I have a Swap partition (ie NOT a swapfile).

It's 1.4GB.

[On Mageia-5 whenever I have checked the status of Swap usage (eg htop) it is ALWAYS showing ZERO usage. I have no idea how I can manipulate the Swap file (real-time or otherwise). There is an entry for it in the fstab file.]

< EDIT: Oh, and I have 760 MB RAM. >

Is that any help? Where do we go from here?

[Bogomips]

Code: Select all

mkswap -f /dev/sdXy;  # X,y replace with swap partition device
swapon   /dev/sdXy
swapon -s

Just run as root, to be sure swap partition is good. The ram seems to be cutting it a bit fine. Anyway, let's get the swap working, then we can rule out insufficient memory.

[boombaby]

Hello, Bogomips...

(a.)
I was wary about the command mkswap -f
I need to make you aware that I am trying Porteus on a system that has 2 disks, and several other working O/S's on it. Linux is installed on second disk.

(b.)
I assumed you meant carry out the commands at the Porteus CLI (ie not Mageia)
So I started Porteus to init 3 and tried the commands from there. (Still not mkswap though! No offence; just cautious. I recently lost the SWAP to another distro after it renamed it.)

So at init-3 I carried out the other commands, thusly...

Code: Select all

swapon -L SWAP     ....revealed the device was "busy" (which sounds like SWAP is already up)

swapoff -L SWAP   ....no feedback at all, but probably means SWAP turned off?? 
swapon -L SWAP   ....no feedback at all, but probably means SWAP turned back on???
swapon -L SWAP    ...."device busy"

Bogomips, is that enough to prove a SWAP exists, is working and usable?

[Bogomips]

Hi

I assumed you meant carry out the commands at the Porteus CLI (ie not Mageia)

The better option.

(Still not mkswap though! No offence; just cautious. I recently lost the SWAP to another distro after it renamed it.)

No loss if swap not working in first place.

So at init-3 I carried out the other commands, thusly...

swapon -L SWAP ....revealed the device was "busy" (which sounds like SWAP is already up)

swapoff -L SWAP ....no feedback at all, but probably means SWAP turned off??
swapon -L SWAP ....no feedback at all, but probably means SWAP turned back on???
swapon -L SWAP ...."device busy"

However not exactly the requested ones.

Bogomips, is that enough to prove a SWAP exists, is working and usable?

At this stage difficult to tell without output from requested commands.

I would ask you to either write down or print the following instructions to have as a guide you when you are in init 3. The output from these commands please present in a code block. To see how it looks, please see your post which I have edited. And to see how it is done, hit the edit button of your post.

Logging in as root in a console:

Code: Select all

swapoff  -L SWAP
mkswap -f  -L SWAP
swapon   -L SWAP
swapon -s -L SWAP

If swap non-functional, may have to bite the bullet with mkswap.

Save output to a file on one of your disks thus:

1. Select output of above commands with left button of mouse as normal

2. Code: Select all

   # Saving output to file on disk/flash drive
   cat > /mnt/sdXy/result

3. Press right mouse button, and output will be pasted where cursor has been waiting for input
4. Press ^D (Ctl+d) to indicate end of input

5. Code: Select all

   reboot