[NTLUG:Discuss] ubuntu 6.10 start up question

[william jones]

----- Original Message ----
From: C.Wesbrooks <cwesbrooks at gmail.com>
To: discuss at ntlug.org
Sent: Monday, January 1, 2007 1:21:37 AM
Subject: [NTLUG:Discuss] ubuntu 6.10 start up question


I am somewhat new to Ubuntu and I have an issue that I can not seem to
Google an answer. First, it does not seem to affect me running Ubuntu
6.10 on my IBM A31 Laptop that I just got (used). When I am watching the
start up screen and the line " Loading Hardware Drivers... " comes up it
says Failed. I have had no problems other than some times it seems to
lock up when browsing with Firefox. I think that has to do with the fact
that it only has 256MB of ram, and have ordered 512MB for it. (update:
got it and installed it.)

Is there some thing that I can do while it is starting up, with Grub, to
see what has failed? Is there some way to pull a file and look at the
Grub default kernel, (this is a second question) it is loading the i386
kernel and I have and wish to use the i686 kernel.

Thanks in Advance for any help or websites that will explain more.
Carlos

Carlos,

Adding memory was a good thing.  Read the Ubuntu web site for other good ideas.  The home page of the Firefox that comes with Ubuntu tells how to get started.

Grub was developed by programmers, for programmers.  It can scare beginners, and some distrbutions use its obscure features to try to lock you in to their distribution. Freespire is a horror in this respect.  Fortunately, Ubuntu Edgy Eft is not one to tie the user in with obscurity.  They try to help.  I dual boot with a previously installed OpenSUSE 10.2, and had no problems.  To avoid problems, the lines in OpenSUSE 10.2 /boot and /boot/grub/menu.lst needed to boot OpenSUSE 10.2 had been writtten on paper ahead of time.  This proved unnecessary, but made me feel better.

For your own information:

1. Boot Ubuntu.  Call up a terminal.  cd /boot. Command ls and read what is there.

2. cd /boot/grub. Command less menu.lst.  Super user status and password may be required.  Read and learn.

3.  To find out what is happening, cd /var/log.  This has many logs.  Happy hunting.  The files ending in .gz are old logs being saved in gzip format.  They can be read with the command zless, or     discarded with rm *.gz  The paranoid can save them, and other files of interest, off computer.  Use any media, such as CD or USB flash drives.
   



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