- This topic has 6 replies, 4 voices, and was last updated May 1-3:23 pm by rob.
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swass
I’m restoring a vintage Hitachi Flora 270v w/Pentium 266MHz MMX, Intel 430TX Chipset, 256GB RAM (SDRAM, maxed), Chips and Technologies 69000 2MB Video, 800×600 TFT. I came across antiX when searching for non-PAE modern Linux distributions. The kernel appears to be panicking during the boot process, leaving the capslock and numlock indicators blinking.
Kernel panic appears to happen right after “The initrd init program took … seconds”, presumable while it’s trying to load the kernel after completing the initrd. I see no more messages after that. Not clear if it’s because of it being a live-usb for installing and something got messed up when the rufus wrote it out or what. I’ve tried all manner of tweaks, including in the BIOS, to get it past that point and have been unsuccessful so far. I’ve tried booting failsafe as well with no success. All fail at the same point.
Screenshot attached. Would really appreciate any help.
– Mike
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Doing a little research, I am curious: Is PAE required? What I had read said no, but the “examples” of old hardware that I was able to find for antiX seemed to suggest it was. If so, I may go with Debian Jessie, which seems to support true i586 architecture. Although it doesn’t seem like it will be long supported with the next release already out there.
fatmac
First thing, did you check your download was good(?) – secondly, why not try the latest version, help is at hand, because our ‘main man’ & ‘creator’ likes to see old equipment running this distro. đ
Linux (& BSD) since 1999
anticapitalista
I don’t think the latest kernels on antiX supports MMX any more.
Philosophers have interpreted the world in many ways; the point is to change it.
antiX with runit - leaner and meaner.
First thing, did you check your download was good(?) â secondly, why not try the latest version, help is at hand, because our âmain manâ & âcreatorâ likes to see old equipment running this distro.
Yes, it’s the latest and I verified the image was good also. I’m thinking this may be “old”er than it supports at this point. Just tried and I was able to boot to Debian Jessie i386 without issue, although Gentoo may be a little better option for me for longer-term support (although a bit more painful) if antiX doesn’t work.
I donât think the latest kernels on antiX supports MMX any more.
I’m suspecting that could be where some of those nasty invalid instruction and kernel panic is coming from. Most distros seem to provide some feedback on lack of CPU capabilities (cmov, pae, etc) that are required, but I didn’t get any of that here if the code exists to provide such feedback.
If anyone else has any thoughts/knowledge to share, I’d love to hear it. This is pretty old and not many people trying to do other things other than old OS (Win9x, XP) on them. Poor security and inability to use modern software is a bit of a concern with those.
- This reply was modified 5 years ago by swass.
Hmm. Replied but it didn’t show up. Apologies of it does later.
I donât think the latest kernels on antiX supports MMX any more.
I suspect that is likely the case. It’s pretty hard to find any current distribution release that still runs on i586 (or i486) hardware that is full featured.
First thing, did you check your download was good(?) â secondly, why not try the latest version, help is at hand, because our âmain manâ & âcreatorâ likes to see old equipment running this distro.
Yes to both, in that I did validate it was good and is the latest version. I suspect that the invalid instruction errors may have been an indication of cmov and pae instructions missing, and perhaps that is why the vmlinuz failed to load. Many distributions will tell you if it requires pae or cmov and you don’t have it, but this may lack that code. Not entirely sure.
If any other thoughts/knowledge, would appreciate it. Debian Jessie did seem to boot on it (says i386), but with support ending soon, it’d likely leave me looking for alternatives if antiX doesn’t work. I’ve run gentoo a number of times, but it’s painful to have to compile every piece of code from scratch. Updates are an overnight (at least) task, if you have many packages.
rob
You shouldn’t need pae for the 486 kernels.
If the antiX 486 kennel is failing for some reason, then you could try for the best of both worlds.
You could remaster your antiX live USB on another system, installing the kernel from Debian manually, but keeping the rest of the antiX ecosystem.
After that, if it was a kernel issue, I would expect it to boot without issue.
- This reply was modified 5 years ago by rob.
- This reply was modified 5 years ago by rob.
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