[SOLVED] Fedora 16 - HP Envy - Help To Start Debugging Kernel Boot

[mattyclarkson]

Hello,

I have a new HP Envy Beats 2002ea bought from me by my work. Unfortunately, fedora support is a little sketchy.

I tried various things to fix the problem of not being able to have the GNOME 3 UI. I have fixed that by enabling the Intel chip on the computer by modifying the Kernel boot parameters according to this article:

http://www.pacificsimplicity.ca/blog...4-power-tweaks

I have also fixed the synaptics touch pad to operate like a Mac by adding a /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/50-synaptics configuration file

However, there is a instability in the boot process that the computer will only reliably boot about 1 in 4 times. The other 3 times it will hang at the "load initramfs" part.

I'm pretty comfortable with Linux and would like to start debugging the boot process to understand why the system isn't booting sometimes.

Does anyone have some tips on the best way to attack this? I assume I will need to turn on more verbose dmesg output from the boot process or try booting into level 3, etc.

I've done quite a bit of booting debugging before, but it would be helpful if anyone has any 'best practices' or their 'go to' debugging mindset when seeing a hung boot.

Thanks

[stevea]

Dmesg is all you will get from the failed innitramfs. Instead you need to make varient intramfs's with more features.

My FIRST approach to your problem would be to run memtest-86+ overnight. This smells like a hardware problem.

[mattyclarkson]

Thanks for answering. I've worked out what it is:

I have an encrypted partition and the boot asks me for my password. However sometimes the boot does get the GUI going to show the nice box with the padlock. It sometimes just sits there with a blank boot screen.

If i press enter it shows the command line input for the encryption password then boots in command line mode - no GUI.

This isn't a problem, I was just really confused. I found out when I started mashing the keyboard!