SOLVED -- SWAP partition AWOL!!!! Infinite Boot!!!!!

[Snowhog]

Re: SWAP partition AWOL!!!! Infinite Boot!!!!!

Another thought: the memory on the new video card is/was/has gone bad! Have you installed it in your daughters PC yet? If it creates issues there as well, then .....

[MoonRise]

Re: SWAP partition AWOL!!!! Infinite Boot!!!!!

OK. Update, and I really don't know what is going on. Never have I run into this without a clear indication of what it is, even HD failure. WinXP on this machine continues to boot fine, but I have seen where Win seem to ignore problems and goes on its merry way regardless to impending doom.

Graphics Card: OK in Both machines under WinXP and when I boot into other Linux Distros.
Memory: Tests OK.
Hard Drive Tests OK and seems OK except for continued problems with the SWAP partition.
All Live CD's of varying Distros have problems booting. USB mem key Linux boot OK. Puppy Linux boots the best. The Kubuntu Linux USB mem key device didn't boot the first time but second time did. From there I did a FSCK on the Kubuntu partition. It found two odd problems with the superblock for last mount and last write being in the future - told it to fix it. Rebooted system first pass on HD did same auto reboot, second time went into Kubuntu - here I am writing this now. Problem noticed was none of the other partitions were mounted, not even the SWAP. Also, although I am using it now, the main Kubuntu partition also reports not being mounted and again although I can access the files. This HD is only about a year old, and I know it could happen just never has to me, is this a HD failure issue? I've also removed all components that weren't really needed for system boot (CD/DVD drives, ZIP drive, Floppy, all USB devices). Same issue.

Mad!!! > > > > >

[dibl]

Re: SWAP partition AWOL!!!! Infinite Boot!!!!!

Mmmmmmmmmm -- doesn't sound like a happy situation!

You mention booting Linux from a USB memory stick. I know that can be done and is done by many, but it strikes me as a kind of fragile setup, since any failure to "safely remove" the USB stick introduces the possibility of file corruption. So I don't know if that is a possibility in your situation. I bought a 2GB SD card today, for my camera, and it crossed my mind that I could put it in my USB SD card reader and set up Linux to boot from it -- I don't know why I would do that, but I'll bet it is possible. It cost only USD $30 -- amazing.

I was recently given a hard drive to "fix" by a family member. It turned out to be a Hitachi Deskstar IDE drive with a 2003 manufacturing date on it. I connected it to an IDE cable and was able to access it with GParted, found a strange partitioning scheme with NTFS and FAT32 partitions, but I couldn't get it to boot Linux until I set the "boot" flag on the first partition. Don't know if that's relevant either, but I thought I'd toss it out for consideration.

[MoonRise]

Re: SWAP partition AWOL!!!! Infinite Boot!!!!!

I actually use the USB mem for this exact situation, but it has always been Windows machines that I had to rescue.

The drive is actually SATA and fairly large capacity.

Anyway, I checked the boot flag. Oddly enough, that flag is set on two Partitions. I'll lay out the parts below and you let me know if that seems normal. I don't think it is, but I've never really checked that until now.

/dev/sda1 - FAT16 Dell partition
/dev/sda2 - ntfs WinXP main root - BOOT Flag set here
/dev/sda3 - ntfs - WinXP data/prog store
/dev/sda4 - Extended (set by Kubuntu long ago on first install)
/dev/sda5 - ext3 - Kubuntu - BOOT Flag set here as well
/dev/sda6 - Linux SWAP

[MoonRise]

Re: SWAP partition AWOL!!!! Infinite Boot!!!!!

I'm looking at the parts on my laptop which is similar in config. The only part that has the boot flag is the Windows part. To me that's odd because GRUB has to go to the Linux part, I thought. Anyway, I'll try duplicating that here. Couldn't be any worse than what I'm experiencing now anyway. Luckily I have backup .

[MoonRise]

Re: SOLVED -- SWAP partition AWOL!!!! Infinite Boot!!!!!

Thanks Dibl!! That evidently was it. Conflicting settings. I also figured out why the boot flag is where it is. It should be on the WinXP partition because that is where the boot loader is installed. Also, I know why it didn't auto-mount, I never replaced the ZIP drive, so the BIOS changed the drive designations .

I love this forum!!! After nearly 25 years doing this kind of stuff I learned something new!

Old Dogs and no new tricks my foot!!

[dibl]

Re: SOLVED -- SWAP partition AWOL!!!! Infinite Boot!!!!!

Hah!

Good for you Moonrise!

Yes, I believe that you never want more than 1 partition marked "boot" on a computer, and if Windows is involved, then it has to be the Windows partition that is marked "boot".

[MoonRise]

Re: SOLVED -- SWAP partition AWOL!!!! Infinite Boot!!!!!

As far as I can tell. it got set through VirtualBox when I did an install of Hardy. I don't know why, that is supposed to be a virtual disk it creates and shouldn't effect the host drive.

[MoonRise]

Re: SOLVED -- SWAP partition AWOL!!!! Infinite Boot!!!!!

Definitely proved that is was VirtualBox. Reinstalled it, set up a virtual drive for Hardy Heron, ran the Live CD through the virtual machine, shut down the virtual machine (gracefully) and then reboot my machine. OH NO!!! It Won't Boot!!. Had to run fsck from my bootable USB linux. Back in and immediately uninstalled it deleted all traces of logs and configs for it. Rebooted several time without problems. It's a shame though, it seemed to function very well, the only problems is it seems to mess up the host FS.

[Snowhog]

Re: SOLVED -- SWAP partition AWOL!!!! Infinite Boot!!!!!

Consider trying VMWare Player.

[MoonRise]

Re: SOLVED -- SWAP partition AWOL!!!! Infinite Boot!!!!!

Will it let you create your own Virtual devices? If not, where would I get those?

[Snowhog]

Re: SOLVED -- SWAP partition AWOL!!!! Infinite Boot!!!!!

You can get pre-built templates for the VM - that's what I did for my Win XP. If you want to build your own, you can install Qemu - QEMU open source emulator which is available in Adept Manager.

dibl has more experience with VMWare Player than I do, so you may want to watch for posts from him in this thread.

[Snowhog]

Re: SOLVED -- SWAP partition AWOL!!!! Infinite Boot!!!!!

After downloading and installing VMWare Player, I visited Forever For Now - VMWare Player Image Creation for the templates and customization instructions I needed.

[Fintan]

Re: SOLVED -- SWAP partition AWOL!!!! Infinite Boot!!!!!

As for vmplayer this is a good place to start if you have an existing half way clean win installation:
http://www.howtoforge.com/vmware_con..._windows_linux

or this:
http://www.advicesource.org/ubuntu/R...re_player.html

then install the latest vmplayer from here:
http://www.vmware.com/download/player/
by dowloading the file to your /home, unpack it to wherever you want and open a terminal in that directory and type:

sudo ./vmware-install.pl

accept all the defaults and you should be ready to go.

[dibl]

Re: SOLVED -- SWAP partition AWOL!!!! Infinite Boot!!!!!

Yes, VMWare Player 2.0 is solid as a rock on my Kubuntu system. I have a Win XP VM that I built about a year ago from a downloaded .vmx file, and installed on Edgy. It wasn't so solid originally, but the new Player seems to be easier to install, and runs more stably on my rig. I have a big MS Visual FoxPro custom database that I run in it -- very resource intensive, and it runs at 95% the speed of a native Win XP installation on the hardware -- very nice.

But, if I were starting again today, I think I would use the tools that Fintan has linked to make the Win XP machine. I hear it's easier that way than tweaking up a generic .vmx.