F9 Live CD hangs

[Uh, Clem]

The F9 Live CD works fine on my 4-yr old Dell OptiPlex GX270, but I want to run it on my brand new Dell OptiPlex 755, and probably replace XP with F9 on the new PC. However, when it reaches "Starting cups:", the screen goes black for a second, then the text comes back with some of the horizontal scan lines missing, and the PC is totally locked up. My only recourse is to turn it off. I suspect an incompatibility with the video card. The exact same thing happens with the F9 Live KDE CD. I haven't found anything on this issue, but I'm hoping for a solution to make F9 work on the 755.

the new 755 came with:
Intel Core 2 Duo E8500 @ 3.16 GHz
4 GB RAM
ATI Radeon HD 2400 XT video card
Windows XP

the old GX270 has:
dual Pentium 4 CPUs @ 2.80 GHz
2.5 GB RAM
NVIDIA GeForce FX 5200 (after-market upgrade)
Windows XP

[LDC]

press "tab" at boot prompt and add noapic parameter to command line and see if this work... :)

[Uh, Clem]

It still locks up at the same place, but now I can read some tiny red letters at the top of the display that say "Memory Test". There was something similar previously, but I couldn't make it out.

[LDC]

ok, then instead of that try adding apic
should that fail too, try both noapic (space) mem=4096m
try combinations of the three elements too
as last resource, you can try noacpi=off

currently I can't think of anything else...

[ScottB]

I had a similar problem with a Gateway system with an Nvidia 8500 video card. In my case, my display indicated that the graphics input was out of range. At the time I was using a standard analog video cable. I connected the display using a digital cable and discovered that Fedora is sending an 800X1200 display contents. Although the display looks squashed, it is usable.

I'm guessing that this is either a typo in the installer or some artifact associated with the display card.

[Uh, Clem]

LDC, I've had no luck so far with the apic/acpi/mem settings, but thanks for the tip on editing the boot command line. I neglected previously to mention one possible clue: After "Booting the kernel" appears, I get "Unable to find persistent overlay; using temporary". I haven't been able spend much time with my new PC lately, but I'm hoping to find a boot command sequence that will allow my F9 Live CD to finish booting on it.

[LDC]

"Unable to find persistent overlay; using temporary". is normal, since you're using the Live CD, so don't mind it ;)
the other reason that could contribute to boot failure is having IPv6 enabled

at grub menu hit e and add 2 (this will tell the kernel to boot on runlevel 2)

once at login prompt (no gui) login as root (since it is a live cd, probably doing su will be enough)

chkconfig --level 345 ip6tables off

then try your luck typing startx

btw, the LiveCD is just a peek, nothing can be compared with the real thing, so don't take it too seriously.

[divisivemind]

Just a heads up, this may be the same issue with 4GB RAM reported here: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=768426&page=5

I have the exact same symptoms on OptiPlex 755 4GB ATI 2400 F9_64. Same issue w/ and w/o ATI v8.5 driver installed.

Interesting, I followed LDC's suggestion to drop into runlevel 2, disable ip6 and startx works. Subsequent boots fail however.

[LDC]

let me ask this: if you drop into rl2 and startx after disabling ip6tables... do you login in the desktop GUI environment normally?

[divisivemind]

let me ask this: if you drop into rl2 and startx after disabling ip6tables... do you login in the desktop GUI environment normally?

Yes, with root though. This was a fresh install and was destined for winbind testing.

[LDC]

mh, sounds like the changes aren't saved.
Do this: once logging in in the GUI, go to system/services and untoggle the "ip6tables" service (choose "disable", the red one), then SAVE the changes and reboot.

[divisivemind]

No dice. I think there's more to this than IPv6 firewalls. The other post seems to suggest it's a memory configuration issue. It's really odd, everything is fine with 2GB installed (1x2GB), adding the 2nd DIMM crashes. Others have seen similar symptoms.

Thanks for your help thusfar!

[LDC]

well it seems pretty straight to me: if disabling ipv6 allows you to login normally, then the problem is isolated to that element :)