# Boot problems and Kernal Panics



## PETC (Mar 6, 2007)

Alright, let me preface this by saying that I hate being the newb, but I am, so go easy on me... I'm a PC guy, know very little about UNIX, and before this evening had never disasembled a Mac (Unless my old Macintosh II counts... I miss that thing...)

Anyways, this is my Roomate's iMac, built in 2001, it's slow, old, and running OS X 10.1.1 I think. Earlier today it froze up, and when she rebooted it, it just sat at the happy Mac icon, which I think means that the file system hadn't been mounted yet, but I'm not sure.

I used the Hardware test to see if anything was wrong and it booted to the CD fine, ran, and found nothing. So then I decided to try and boot to the console and run the disk utility that every site I found was telling me to run, but then it wouldn't get past the third or fourth line of the console when you first enter it and wouldn't ever get to the prompt.

So then I tried to boot to the OS X CD, but all it does is have kernal panics every time I try, and it won't even boot to the OS 9 CD.

I've got a picture of as much of the KP as I could get on the screen, but I'll only post it if you guys need it, since I know no one wants to go through a KP log for no reason.

Sorry for the long first post, and I'm really sorry if this is in the wrong place.


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## nixgeek (Mar 7, 2007)

This might require that you do post the kernel panic log.

Have you tried swapping or reseating the RAM in that iMac?  How much RAM does it have in total?  Seems like this might be the issue of it's not the hard drvie failing as well.


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## PETC (Mar 7, 2007)

I was thinking it might be the hard drive. I'm not sure if you're supposed to be able to even see Mac formated HD's in the bios of a PC, but the first thing I did was remove the HD and set it to slave and put it onto my PC, but the Bios never saw it. Kept saying that Device 1 not found.

It either has 256 MB of RAM or 128 MB, whatever it is it's a single stick with two DIMM slots. I'll check later today. And I did also read that kernal panics could be caused by RAM failure, so I swaped the the RAM between the DIMMs and still got the same result both times.

Here's the log.


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## PETC (Mar 7, 2007)

The one line that makes me wonder is the:

panic(cpu 0): 0x300 - Data access:

But as I said, I know nothing about Unix, so that could just be something that happens.


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## PETC (Mar 7, 2007)

Alright guys, I tried a spare hard drive that I had and it does the same thing when trying to boot to the Mac OS X CD. Any ideas here? RAM? CPU? What do you guys think?


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## nixgeek (Mar 7, 2007)

Have you tried replacing the IDE cables on both the CD-ROM and the hard drive?

Also, see about replacing the RAM.


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## nixgeek (Mar 7, 2007)

Also, have you disconnected any other peripherals leaving only the keyboard and the mouse?  If not, do so and report back with the results....it could be the software for a peripheral that's causing the kernel panics as well.


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## PETC (Mar 7, 2007)

I'll try a new IDE cable, but I don't have any extra RAM that is compatible. And yes, everything except the Apple keyboard/mouse is unpluged.


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## PETC (Mar 7, 2007)

Nevermind, leave it to apple to design some crazy IDE cable for their computers. I don't have an extra. lol


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## PETC (Mar 8, 2007)

Guys, I've been trying to install Ubuntu, and when I loaded up the Kernal for no splash screens I keep getting *"Buffer I/O error on device hdb, logical block XXXXX"* errors.

I know for a fact that the HD is good, however it is formated Fat32, but I don't think this should be a problem.

Does this narrow down my problem even further to it being an IDE cable?


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## PETC (Mar 8, 2007)

Well, Ubuntu appears to be installing. Currently partitioning the hard drive. We'll see how this goes. I had to modify some config file to make the iMac's monitor work with Ubuntu, but now it seems to be working smoothly.

What makes me curious is why it had problems installing OS X... I guess we'll find out if something goes catastrophicaly wrong soon. If it doesn't I'd be really stumped. Unless the memory tollerences for OS X are just way stricter then for Ubuntu, and the memory is in fact bad.

Not sure if it's on the site anywhere, but just in case anyone searches throgh these posts in the future, here's what I had to do to get the display working on the iMac when installing Ubuntu:

The problem stemed from after the splash screen loaded all the temp files. It'd go black, I'd get a blinking prompt, and then the screen would click off. After it clicked off I hit Control + Option + F2 and got into the console (Sometimes Control + Option + F1 worked)

Once there you have to do the following things:


> $ sudo nano /etc/X11/xorg.conf
> 
> Change the frequencies in monitor section as follows:
> 
> ...



Also I found that didn't work completley and the screen was still messed up, so I found I had to delete  *Load "dri"* in the same file. After I did that the display worked perfectly.

Cheers.


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## nixgeek (Mar 8, 2007)

Linux cannot run on FAT32.  Linux can use either ext2, ext3, reiserfs, xfs, jfs, and probably some others that I can't think of at the moment.  But it won't run on any Microsoft-based filesystems.

If you are using Ubuntu, I recommend doing the install using the Alternate Installation CD image.  It has a lot more options than the Live CD does and is usually more successful.

As for the xorg.conf file, I've tweaked mine somewhat and as you've noticed DRI isn't supported properly on those iMacs (causes X11 to lock up hard).  Here's a copy of the one I'm using if you decide to use it (I've commented out the DRI module and section just in case it becomes supported in later versions of Xorg on Linux/ppc).



```
Section "Files"
	FontPath	"/usr/share/X11/fonts/misc"
	FontPath	"/usr/share/X11/fonts/cyrillic"
	FontPath	"/usr/share/X11/fonts/100dpi/:unscaled"
	FontPath	"/usr/share/X11/fonts/75dpi/:unscaled"
	FontPath	"/usr/share/X11/fonts/Type1"
	FontPath	"/usr/share/X11/fonts/100dpi"
	FontPath	"/usr/share/X11/fonts/75dpi"
	# path to defoma fonts
	FontPath	"/var/lib/defoma/x-ttcidfont-conf.d/dirs/TrueType"
EndSection

Section "Module"
	Load	"i2c"
	Load	"bitmap"
	Load	"ddc"
	#Load	"dri"
	Load	"extmod"
	Load	"freetype"
	Load	"glx"
	Load	"GLcore"
	Load	"int10"
	Load	"type1"
	Load	"vbe"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
	Identifier	"Generic Keyboard"
	Driver		"kbd"
	Option		"CoreKeyboard"
	Option		"XkbRules"	"xorg"
	Option		"XkbModel"	"pc104"
	Option		"XkbLayout"	"us"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
	Identifier	"Configured Mouse"
	Driver		"mouse"
	Option		"CorePointer"
	Option		"Device"		"/dev/input/mice"
	Option		"Protocol"		"ExplorerPS/2"
	Option		"ZAxisMapping"		"4 5"
	Option		"Emulate3Buttons"	"true"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
  Driver        "wacom"
  Identifier    "stylus"
  Option        "Device"        "/dev/wacom"          # Change to 
                                                      # /dev/input/event
                                                      # for USB
  Option        "Type"          "stylus"
  Option        "ForceDevice"   "ISDV4"               # Tablet PC ONLY
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
  Driver        "wacom"
  Identifier    "eraser"
  Option        "Device"        "/dev/wacom"          # Change to 
                                                      # /dev/input/event
                                                      # for USB
  Option        "Type"          "eraser"
  Option        "ForceDevice"   "ISDV4"               # Tablet PC ONLY
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
  Driver        "wacom"
  Identifier    "cursor"
  Option        "Device"        "/dev/wacom"          # Change to 
                                                      # /dev/input/event
                                                      # for USB
  Option        "Type"          "cursor"
  Option        "ForceDevice"   "ISDV4"               # Tablet PC ONLY
EndSection

Section "Device"
	Identifier	"ATI Technologies, Inc. Rage 128 Pro Ultra TR"
	Driver		"r128"
	#Option		"UseFBDev"		"true"
	
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
	Identifier	"iMac"
#	Option		"DPMS"
	HorizSync	60-60
	VertRefresh	75-117
EndSection

Section "Screen"
	Identifier	"Default Screen"
	Device		"ATI Technologies, Inc. Rage 128 Pro Ultra TR"
	Monitor		"iMac"
	DefaultDepth	24
	SubSection "Display"
		Depth		1
		Modes		"800x600" "640x480"
	EndSubSection
	SubSection "Display"
		Depth		4
		Modes		"800x600" "640x480"
	EndSubSection
	SubSection "Display"
		Depth		8
		Modes		"800x600" "640x480"
	EndSubSection
	SubSection "Display"
		Depth		15
		Modes		"800x600" "640x480"
	EndSubSection
	SubSection "Display"
		Depth		16
		Modes		"800x600" "640x480"
	EndSubSection
	SubSection "Display"
		Depth		24
		Modes		"1024x768" "800x600" "640x480"
	EndSubSection
EndSection

Section "ServerLayout"
	Identifier	"Default Layout"
	Screen		"Default Screen"
	InputDevice	"Generic Keyboard"
	InputDevice	"Configured Mouse"
	InputDevice     "stylus" "SendCoreEvents"
	InputDevice     "cursor" "SendCoreEvents"
	InputDevice     "eraser" "SendCoreEvents"
EndSection

#Section "DRI"
#	Mode	0666
#EndSection
```


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## nixgeek (Mar 8, 2007)

Regarding the error message you got when installing Ubuntu, I wonder if maybe the _disk controller_ is failing.  If that's the case, then it might be time to get a new Mac. 

The good thing is that the Mac mini is quite inexpensive and would still be significantly faster than that G3 iMac.  It would also have the latest version of OS X and all of the included applications.


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## PETC (Mar 8, 2007)

I'm still using the LiveCD, and I've gotten as far as actually installing the system files with it, but it locked up at 22%. I'm going to give it another try, but I do think something more is wrong with this computer then just not running OS X.


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## PETC (Mar 8, 2007)

Interesting... the last time I finaly got the LiveCD to boot to desktop the Ubunto 6.06.1 ppc CD wasn't visible, but now it is...

I wonder if the cable is failing intermitently. Anyone have a spare iMac IDE cable they'd mind shipping me?


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## PETC (Mar 8, 2007)

Starting to think it's actually the CD Rom drive, but I have no idea how that could have caused the computer to not boot to OS X. I got the install to 44% this time before it locked up.

I'm going to start installing again and then go to work and see if it's fixed or moved at all when I get back.


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## nixgeek (Mar 8, 2007)

Actually, you're right about the CD-ROM drive!  I hadn't thought about it until you mentioned it.  The device "hdb" is the CD-ROM usually.  The "hda" device is the hard drive.  So it could be the CD-ROM drive that's at fault.

Let's just hope it's not the IDE controller.


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## PETC (Mar 8, 2007)

Does anyone have a spare drive or cable they'd be willing to send me for cheap? I don't want to spend a lot of money on this thing.


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