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Q: When I run !Linux and select a kernel it just hangs.
A: !Linux v3.33 will not boot if there is no SIMM in the DRAM socket nearest the back of the machine, so if you only have one SIMM you may experience this problem - move your SIMM to fix it.
A: If you have RISCOS 4.02 or later than you also need the memfix module from castle technologies to enable !Linux or Linloader to allocate memory properly.
Q: Linux boots but hangs after reporting my IDE drive(s)/CD-ROM.
A: You are using the 2.0.36 kernel and it has failed to identify
your motherboard IDE interface properly. You need to tell it which ports and
interrupt it should use. You do this by entering the following at the kernel
arguments prompt:
ide0=0x1f0,0x3f6,9
Q: After the kernel is supposed to have booted the screen is blank apart from a single vertical row of widely-spaced pixels. These move/change if you press enter or swap between virtual terminals (ALT-Fn).
A: You are in a screen mode of more than 256 colours. ARMLinux can only cope with up to 256 colours, and should change to a suitable mode on booting. If this mode change fails it will boot anyway and the described problem occurs (everything is working, but the display is corrupt). You can modify the !Linux.SetModeNew file to change to a suitable mode for your setup and then the problem should no longer arise. (It only occurs if your normal desktop mode is > 256 colours).
Q: When I reach the 'Install Log' window and select OK, instead of beginning the install I am returned to the 'Components to Install' window and no matter what I do I just seem to cycle between these two windows via the Unresolved Dependencies window.
A: I wish we knew! It seems that the installer is not happy with some aspect of the partition you are going to install to. Going back (with the 'back' buttons and reformatting the swap partition, for example, can make it behave). Trying a different-sized partitioning arrangement has also prompted success. Another thing to try is 'Formatting' the RISC OS partition in full rather than just 'Initialising' it (when using Hform). Unfortunately the code for the installer is not publically available so we can't do much about this. More definitive answer if we find one!
Q:On boot-up it reports that it cannot find a 'swap-space signature'. I do have a Swap partition formatted!
A:This probably means that it is looking in the wrong place. Check that the swap entry in /etc/fstab matches the partition that actually _is_ your swap. The installer is prone to adding several spurious entries to your /etc/fstab file. Remove all the ones that point to the wrong partitions (the correct one says the type is 'swap' and is usually /dev/hda4.
Q:I get the message 'WARNING!!!:Running e2fsck on a mounted file system may cause SEVERE filesystem damage' during boot-up
A:Linux usually runs a file system check (fsck) on the disk partitions at boot time. This should be done on a filesystem when it is mounted read-only, and NOT when it is mounted read-write. For some reason ARMLinux either has the / partition mounted read-write, or thinks it has, when the start up script runs e2fsck, hence the dire warnings!
The solution is to edit the file /etc/rc.d/rc.sysinit and add the line:
mount -n -o remount,ro /between the existing lines:
echo "Checking root filesystems"and
fsck -a /
This will remount the / partition in read-only (ro) mode just before the check, and so checking will occur without error. The same script remounts the partition read-write again after checking, several lines further on, so no futher modifications are needed.
Q:I get a report of a 'memory violation' during booting. It seems to work OK, but I am rather suspicious that all is not well...
A:This comes in a mention of syslogd startup, and seems to also be common and not terribly harmful. It may be that syslogd is not working properly as a result..
Q:Is there a way of keeping the text that appears during booting so that I do not have to try and note them down on the fly?
A:It is automatically kept. You can view it by typing
dmesg
Q:I get a 'crosscheck!= 0xff' error when I try to mount my ADFS partition from ARMLinux.
A:If your partition is formatted with RISC OS 4 long filename support then this is not supported by the ADFS driver, at least up to kernel 2.2.13, and probably beyond.
Q:Keys wrong/not working (#, ~ and £)
A:Replace the file /usr/lib/kbd/keytables/arm-ps2/uk.map with this k