Flashing keyboard LEDS upon boot.

Flashing keyboard LEDS upon boot.

[Richard B. Johnson]

Sometimes, when booting Linux-2.3.24 from bzImage, machines
display "Uncompressing Linux ..., Ok. Booting the kernel."
Then the machine just sits there with the keyboard LEDS
(Num-Lock, Caps-lock, and Scroll-lock) flashing at about
a 1-second interval. It will do this "forever".

Can anybody tell me what it has found "wrong" that prevents
it from continuing the boot? A whole bunch of new Dell Computers
display this problem. The second boot will always work, but
the first cold-start boot will often result in this problem.

Cheers,
Dick Johnson
Penguin : Linux version 2.4.24 on an i686 machine (797.90 BogoMips).
            Note 96.31% of all statistics are fiction.

Re: Flashing keyboard LEDS upon boot.

[Richard B. Johnson]

On Mon, 2 Feb 2004, Richard B. Johnson wrote:

>
> Sometimes, when booting Linux-2.3.24 from bzImage, machines
                                  ^
Typo                      Linux-2.4.24

> display "Uncompressing Linux ..., Ok. Booting the kernel."
> Then the machine just sits there with the keyboard LEDS
> (Num-Lock, Caps-lock, and Scroll-lock) flashing at about
> a 1-second interval. It will do this "forever".
>
> Can anybody tell me what it has found "wrong" that prevents
> it from continuing the boot? A whole bunch of new Dell Computers
> display this problem. The second boot will always work, but
> the first cold-start boot will often result in this problem.
>

Cheers,
Dick Johnson
Penguin : Linux version 2.4.24 on an i686 machine (797.90 BogoMips).
            Note 96.31% of all statistics are fiction.

Re: Flashing keyboard LEDS upon boot.

[Willy Tarreau]

Hi Dick,

On Mon, Feb 02, 2004 at 11:06:50AM -0500, Richard B. Johnson wrote:
> > Sometimes, when booting Linux-2.3.24 from bzImage, machines
>                                   ^
> Typo                      Linux-2.4.24
> 
> > display "Uncompressing Linux ..., Ok. Booting the kernel."
> > Then the machine just sits there with the keyboard LEDS
> > (Num-Lock, Caps-lock, and Scroll-lock) flashing at about
> > a 1-second interval. It will do this "forever".

Flashing leds indicate a kernel panic on recent kernels (was in -ac for
a while).

> > Can anybody tell me what it has found "wrong" that prevents
> > it from continuing the boot? A whole bunch of new Dell Computers
> > display this problem. The second boot will always work, but
> > the first cold-start boot will often result in this problem.

Hmmm. perhaps ACPI or a broken driver ?

Cheers,
Willy

Re: Flashing keyboard LEDS upon boot.

[Len Brown]

Richard,

Curious that the 2nd boot works...

In any case, if the kernel dies in the early ACPI table parsing code
you'd never get any console output -- so Willy may be right.

Let me know if the system boots with "acpi=off", but does not boot
without.

thanks,
-Len

On Tue, 2004-02-03 at 18:13, Willy Tarreau wrote:
> Hi Dick,
> 
> On Mon, Feb 02, 2004 at 11:06:50AM -0500, Richard B. Johnson wrote:
> > > Sometimes, when booting Linux-2.3.24 from bzImage, machines
> >                                   ^
> > Typo                      Linux-2.4.24
> >
> > > display "Uncompressing Linux ..., Ok. Booting the kernel."
> > > Then the machine just sits there with the keyboard LEDS
> > > (Num-Lock, Caps-lock, and Scroll-lock) flashing at about
> > > a 1-second interval. It will do this "forever".
> 
> Flashing leds indicate a kernel panic on recent kernels (was in -ac
> for
> a while).
> 
> > > Can anybody tell me what it has found "wrong" that prevents
> > > it from continuing the boot? A whole bunch of new Dell Computers
> > > display this problem. The second boot will always work, but
> > > the first cold-start boot will often result in this problem.
> 
> Hmmm. perhaps ACPI or a broken driver ?
> 
> Cheers,
> Willy
> 
> -
> To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe
> linux-kernel" in
> the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org
> More majordomo info at  http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
> Please read the FAQ at  http://www.tux.org/lkml/
> 
> 

Re: Flashing keyboard LEDS upon boot.

[Richard B. Johnson]

On Wed, 4 Feb 2004, Willy Tarreau wrote:

> Hi Dick,
>
> On Mon, Feb 02, 2004 at 11:06:50AM -0500, Richard B. Johnson wrote:
> > > Sometimes, when booting Linux-2.3.24 from bzImage, machines
> >                                   ^
> > Typo                      Linux-2.4.24
> >
> > > display "Uncompressing Linux ..., Ok. Booting the kernel."
> > > Then the machine just sits there with the keyboard LEDS
> > > (Num-Lock, Caps-lock, and Scroll-lock) flashing at about
> > > a 1-second interval. It will do this "forever".
>
> Flashing leds indicate a kernel panic on recent kernels (was in -ac for
> a while).
>
> > > Can anybody tell me what it has found "wrong" that prevents
> > > it from continuing the boot? A whole bunch of new Dell Computers
> > > display this problem. The second boot will always work, but
> > > the first cold-start boot will often result in this problem.
>
> Hmmm. perhaps ACPI or a broken driver ?
>
> Cheers,
> Willy
>

Well I modified the kernel to write 0 to the printer port
when it starts uncompressing the RAM disk and subsequent
numbers after. It never gets beyond 1, which means it crashed
immediately after or during the printing of "OK. Booting the
kernel"

Cheers,
Dick Johnson
Penguin : Linux version 2.4.24 on an i686 machine (797.90 BogoMips).
            Note 96.31% of all statistics are fiction.