T61p reboots during boot from Linux live CD. boots well from internal disk

[0liver]

Hello,

my T61p (Penryn T9300, 2.5GHz, 4GB, Intel graphics (replaced Nvidia MoBo with FRU42W7875 in summer), Middleton bios with Fn/Ctrl-key swap) always booted well from Linux live CDs.

now, without any error message, when booting from a live CD, the screen goes black and without showing any error, it reboots after a few seconds while loading initial Linux system (after splash screen).

it still boots well (arch linux) from internal sata disk.

I tried the following live systems: arch linux, archbang (standard and load into RAM), sysrescueCD, bootRepair. all go into black screen and reboot.

replacing the DVD-ram drive didn't help. Neither toggling legacy/HCPI sata mode in BIOS.

just tried again: the boot from CD fails ONLY if the internal disk is not present.

any idea?

I removed the internal disk because I wanted to make a bootable, external usb drive with Toshiba Canvio Basics 3TB (by the way this drive is not recognized as bootable device by the T61, neither GPT nor BIOS/GPT! while the drive works great as data drive.)

best,
O.

[jaspen-meyer]

Sounds like it's having trouble with the 3TB disk, but that's just a guess.

Maybe there's a boot parameter you could add to get around the problem. SystemRescueCD, or a gentoo minimal install cd (or usb) includes some boot time parameters. Play around with those and see if you can work around the problem.

[xebbmw]

It happens with my system also. I was trying to boot from Ubuntu 10 and 12 Live CD, I have no HDD installed in the machine. It only worked for me with Ubuntu 9 Live CD.
With another T60 there are no issues.
I was looking on the web for similar problems and then I found this post: http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?t=111540.
My final thoughts is that I will install a HDD in my machine.

[RealBlackStuff]

Press F12 upon booting, and select which drive to boot from.
You probably also might have the wrong boot-sequence in BIOS.

[0liver]

> You probably also might have the wrong boot-sequence in BIOS.

of course I use F12 and proper boot sequence. the problem occurs during CD-boot process.

it seems (most?) linux live CDs don't boot if there is no HDD installed.
why it works on 'another' T60 (and not on T61), as reported by xebbmw, is puzzling.
(will look at the link he provided.) I also have a T60 lying around. will try this later.

live CDs should be usable w/o HDD to go online in case the HDD is broken.
when I let a guest use my notbok I usually remove the HDD while guest works with live cd or ext. USB HD boot.

[Neil]

Just another long shot guess, but, could be fault with system RAM. I don't know this well enough to explain, but could be that booting a live system used more or different sections of RAM than a HDD boot. Anyway, would not hurt to run Memtest86+, if nothing else, just to rule out the possibility of a RAM fault.

[0liver]

thought about it too and I ran memtest full cycle. also the t61 boots very well arch linux with mate desktop from HDD.

[evening_hunger]

You could pass additional boot parameters to the kernel before starting the boot. If you use GRUB (which is the case in Debian derivatives as Ubu) you'll be able to change boot params by pressing 'e' once GRUB's menu is displayed.
You could think about removing 'splash' and 'quiet'. In fact those params might also help to alleviate your problems, I wouldn't rule out your newly booted system tries to fire up X11 and dies. Why is hard to guess, perhaps newer kernels have some tough love with your graphics card.
HDD should have nothing to do with dat...

[0liver]

it crashes shortly after boot process begins, with all distros I tried. long before X11 is activated. hard to read anything and hard to take a photo of screen since it goes to black screen to hard reboot. Graphics is intel.

to see where the error happens I could take a video... will try this later today.

[evening_hunger]

Bonne chance! By the way I'll be passing by Fulda soon (FR->PL X-mas).

[w1k0]

@0liver

Try to boot some Linux from USB. I use USB drive with five Linuces: Porteus, Slacko (Puppy), CrunchBang, Tiny Core, and Slax booting them with syslinux. You do not need such fancy things so try just Porteus:

http://www.porteus.org/

To install it on USB drive you may use Linux or Windows.

Alternatively you may try Lenovo Linux Diagnostics – Bootable USB:

http://support.lenovo.com/products/lapt ... s/DS025449

This version works with 64-bit systems only. To install it on USB drive you need some running Linux distribution on your machine or some friend using Linux:

Code: Select all

# ./linux-bootable-usb-4307318.run
[INFO]Looking for USB drives...
Choose a USB device (WARNING: all content within it will be lost) 
    (Generic USB_Flash_Disk) sdb
Choice(sdb):sdb
[INFO]Chosen sdb
[INFO]Formatting usb drive...
1+0 records in
1+0 records out
512 bytes (512 B) copied, 0.00315662 s, 162 kB/s
[INFO]Creating partition table...
[INFO]Creating the partition...
Warning: The resulting partition is not properly aligned for best performance.
[INFO]Marking partition as bootable...
mkfs.vfat 3.0.11 (24 Dec 2010)
[INFO]Done formatting usb drive. =====
[INFO]Extracting package...
62138+1 records in
708404+1 records out
362703154 bytes (363 MB) copied, 5.44779 s, 66.6 MB/s
[INFO]Done extracting package.====
[INFO]Copying files...
    [INFO]Instaling mbr...
1+0 records in
1+0 records out
440 bytes (440 B) copied, 0.00303593 s, 145 kB/s
    [INFO]Installing syslinux onto USB device...
/dev/sdb1
    [INFO]Mounting USB device in order to copy files...
    [INFO]Copying files...
    [INFO]Commiting changes to disk. This can take a while and is not interruptible.
[INFO]Done copying files. ===
[INFO]Cleaning up..
[INFO]Done====
[INFO]All done! ===

# mount /mnt/sdb1-vfat

# ls -l /mnt/sdb1-vfat/
total 196
drwxrwxrwx 3 root root   4096 Dec 20 01:22 EFI
drwxrwxrwx 3 root root   4096 Dec 20 01:22 boot
-r-xr-xr-x 1 root root 116636 Dec 20 01:22 ldlinux.c32
-r-xr-xr-x 1 root root  61440 Dec 20 01:22 ldlinux.sys
drwxrwxrwx 2 root root   4096 Dec 20 01:23 live
drwxrwxrwx 2 root root   4096 Dec 20 01:23 syslinux
drwxrwxrwx 4 root root   4096 Dec 20 01:23 syslinux_binaries

# df -h /mnt/sdb1-vfat/
Filesystem      Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/sdb1       500M  352M  148M  71% /mnt/sdb1-vfat

As you see 500 MB USB drive is enough.

I tried Lenovo Linux Diagnostics on T61 and it works well (I tested the program because my machine works well without testing).

[rumbero]

I tried the following live systems: arch linux, archbang (standard and load into RAM), sysrescueCD, bootRepair. all go into black screen and reboot.

replacing the DVD-ram drive didn't help. Neither toggling legacy/HCPI sata mode in BIOS.
[...]
just tried again: the boot from CD fails ONLY if the internal disk is not present.

As far as i remember, at least on T6x machines, booting from optical drive only works with an internal HDD being present. So you are pretty much stuck here.

To circumvent this limitation, don't bother with the optical drive and just use a USB pendrive, instead. As stated on www.archlinux.org/download, the Arch ISO image can "be directly written to a USB stick using a utility like `dd`".

Modern Live Linux system ISO images are typically distributed as isohybrid images. This means they have some sort of a partition table embedded, which will make any USB stick easily bootable by simply writing the the ISO image directly to it.

You can verify a given ISO image for the isohybrid feature by simply running fdisk -l on it:

Code: Select all

[root]/isoimg.d # fdisk -l CentOS-6.7-x86_64-LiveCD.iso
Disk CentOS-6.7-x86_64-LiveCD.iso: 697 MiB, 730857472 bytes, 1427456 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disklabel type: dos
Disk identifier: 0x6b8b4567

Device                        Boot Start     End Sectors  Size Id Type
CentOS-6.7-x86_64-LiveCD.iso1 *        0 1427455 1427456  697M 17 Hidden HPFS/NT
[root]/isoimg.d # 

As can be seen above, the CentOS LiveCD image includes such a partition table and therefore can just be written to a pendrive. This can be done either with dd:

Code: Select all

[root]/isoimg.d # dd if=CentOS-6.7-x86_64-LiveCD.iso of=/dev/sdb
1427456+0 records in
1427456+0 records out
730857472 bytes (731 MB) copied, 341.546 s, 2.1 MB/s
[root]/isoimg.d # 

or by simply using cat like this:

Code: Select all

[root]/isoimg.d # cat CentOS-6.7-x86_64-LiveCD.iso > /dev/sdb
[root]/isoimg.d # 

And this will be the the very same result for both methods:

Code: Select all

[root]/isoimg.d # fdisk -l /dev/sdb
Disk /dev/sdb: 7.3 GiB, 7815856128 bytes, 15265344 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disklabel type: dos
Disk identifier: 0x6b8b4567

Device     Boot Start     End Sectors  Size Id Type
/dev/sdb1  *        0 1427455 1427456  697M 17 Hidden HPFS/NTFS
[root]/isoimg.d # 

Such a pendrive can be directly booted on a given Thinkpad if booting from USB is enabled in the BIOS.

Personally, I haven't used any optical drive for Linux installations since long time already because using a USB pendrive with an ISO image dd'ed to it is much more convenient and way faster than the ancient physical CD/DVD method. Under Linux the ISO image format has become nothing more than a mere container format, which can be used either as a virtual optical drive for a virtual machine or directly on a USB pendrive. The ultrabay of a Thinkpad is much more useful with an extra battery or secondary HDD than wasting it with a nowadays obsolete physical optical drive.

You can read up more details about the isohybrid feature on www.syslinux.org/wiki/index.php/Isohybrid.

[w1k0]

Personally, I haven't used any optical drive for Linux installations since long time already because using a USB pendrive with an ISO image dd'ed to it is much more convenient and way faster than the ancient physical CD/DVD method.

That is entirely true. On the other hand it is good to have mini CD with a few portable Linuces as well. When I have to go somewhere in order to test or use some machine I always take with me a bootable USB stick and a bootable mini CD because some machines have problems with booting from CD while the other machines have problems with booting from USB.