Boot freezes when bttv kicks in?

JiveBologna · Post by **JiveBologna** » Wed Jun 02, 2004 3:12 am

Hey, I'd just like to start with a big thanks for putting all this together! I've never used ZoneMinder before, and I'm a bit new to Linux (installed Slackware once, and have used older versions of Mandrake in passing), so I figured a Live CD was the best way to go.

Anyway, my first time around it failed and I was eventually able to track it down to a bad CRC. So I'm on my second CD-R now, and this time it's freezing up here:

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<6>Linux video capture interface: v1.00
bttv: driver version 0.9.12 loaded
bttv: using 8 buffers with 2080k (520 pages) each for capture

That's as far as it gets - just a blinking cursor after that. Here's my hardware:

Crappy eMachines T1100
Celeron 1 GHz
256 MB RAM
20 GB HD
GeForce 2 MX200 PCI
Star Imavision 4-input capture card - a generic bt878.

Anyone have any ideas?

-------------------------------
EDIT: Problem solved! I removed the capture card, plugged it back in again, and booted with the "livecd noscsi" bootcode. Next problem was that X wouldn't start - solved that by removing my GeForce 2 and switching back to onboard.

rdmelin · Post by **rdmelin** » Wed Jun 02, 2004 5:42 am

I have a bt878 generic card that I bought on ebay that causes a boot hangup. Actually it will boot but it hangs at loading bttv for 5 minutes (timed). If I load the module manually I get a kernel message that says "readee error". I was unable to find much about that error, but guessed it involved trying to read an eeprom or similar on the card, and simply timed out after 5 minutes. After booting it worked just fine.

So just in case you have run into something similar, try giving it a full 5 minutes and see if it will finish booting.

regards,
Ross

JiveBologna · Post by **JiveBologna** » Wed Jun 02, 2004 12:48 pm

rdmelin wrote:I have a bt878 generic card that I bought on ebay that causes a boot hangup.

Yup, got mine from eBay. XP and Mandrake 10 seemed to pick it up fine, just not bttv I guess. I gave it a full 10 minutes, then the monitor went into suspend. I'll leave it running for now just in case, and punch the spacebar every 10 minutes to keep the monitor alive.

Anyone have any other ideas? I don't suppose there's a config file on the iso anywhere that would let me specify my card-type, to keep it from auto-detecting?

...Nevermind. It doesn't look like I can just dump the contents of a squashfs to a directory. I can append though...

rdmelin · Post by **rdmelin** » Wed Jun 02, 2004 2:59 pm

Here is a possible workaround.
Remove the capture card, and try the install without it.
If the installation works, install a 2.6.6 kernel as discussed here:
http://www.zoneminder.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=3416
Then reinstall the card, and see if things are working.
The later kernel has improved bttv support. If you succeed in installing the software but the boot still hangs with the capture card installed, you might post a note in the hardware compatibility list.

regards,
Ross

JiveBologna · Post by **JiveBologna** » Thu Jun 03, 2004 1:40 pm

Thanks for the advice. I tried it without the capture card, but it's still hanging at about the same spot. Here's the last two lines of boot:

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/etc/rc.d/rc.modules: line 23: 7980 Segmentation fault  modprobe $module $args >/dev/null 2>&1

<6>Linux agpgart interface v0.100 (c) Dave Jones

Followed by the blinking cursor.

rdmelin · Post by **rdmelin** » Thu Jun 03, 2004 2:28 pm

So loading some module is causing a segfault. The most common problem is a scsi module.
Reviewing your posts in this thread, I dont see that you say you tried booting with "livecd noscsi". There are a number of other boot codes to bypass parts of hardware detection. A list is here:
http://www.zoneminder.com/fileadmin/dow ... .BOOTCODES

JiveBologna · Post by **JiveBologna** » Thu Jun 03, 2004 3:07 pm

Ah, silly me. I read through this entire forum before posting this and saw the noscsi idea, but I figured it didn't apply to me since I didn't have any scsi hardware.

I tried it though, and at least it's not hanging anymore. Now I get all the way to the point where it says:

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Starting ACPI daemon

And then the screen goes blank. So far I've tried "noscsi", "nopcmcia", and "safex" but nothing seems to help. This motherboard does have onboard video, but I've got that disabled in the BIOS. Just in case though, I tried switching my monitor to the on-board VGA port to see if it had just switched over for some reason, but still nothing.

Any other ideas? I can't thank you enough for all the help!

rdmelin · Post by **rdmelin** » Thu Jun 03, 2004 11:18 pm

OK, progress at least. At this point X is trying to start. I haven,t had much problem with X on the machines I have installed on, but I would try the bootcode "xres= " , with a few different valid values from the READDME.BOOTCODES, then possibly "xbpp= ". You might also try using a different monitor if you have one availible.

JiveBologna · Post by **JiveBologna** » Fri Jun 04, 2004 12:31 am

Tried all three, with all the available res and bit settings, on two different monitors. Still no dice.

But get this. I finally tried just removing the GeForce 2 altogether, and defaulting back to the onboard "Intel EXTREME Graphics", and it works fine now.

What do you think would cause that? I had Mandrake 10 (ISO, not Community) running on it just fine a couple days ago. Maybe a borked driver somewhere? Or just my crappy eMachines?

Anyway, I'm up and running now - thanks for all the help!