[ltp] OT - Linux Thinkcentre...

[John Jason Jordan]

On Sun, 18 Jul 2010 19:50:30 +1200
zed <zed@zed.net.nz> dijo:

>John Jason Jordan <johnxj@comcast.net> wrote:

>> I don't know of a Thinkcentre list, but something sounds wrong here.
>> 
>> I would suggest interrupting the boot process at the point Grub is
>> loading, then edit the boot line. If Mint uses the old Grub you can
>> edit it by using a text editor to open /boot/grub/menu.lst.
>> Specifically, you want to remove "quiet" from the boot line. (I
>> think this is all you have to do, but it's been a long time since I
>> messed with Grub.) The goal is to make the boot process stream the
>> text messages of what is going on instead of just giving you a GUI
>> progress bar. I'll bet there are one or more processes that are
>> hanging and then erroring out.

>Good thinking. LinuxMint v9 has Grub2, so there is no menu.lst Any
>pointers as to how I edit Grub2, please?

I know little of Grub2, so I can't help there.

Chris. made the suggestion to use dmesg at the command line. (Make the
terminal window really big!) This will give you all the messages that
have happened since the start of the boot process. The problem with
dmesg is that it will show the errors and hangings, but not how long it
took to hang and error out. Some errors are virtually instantaneous;
others might take a minute or more. Still, dmesg is a good idea.

You could also boot to recovery mode. That is, at the start of the boot
process hit Esc, which will bring up the Grub boot menu. The default is
the regular boot to the GUI, but underneath should be a recovery mode.
This will stream the messages as you boot. The problem is that recovery
mode boots you to a command line and does not load the GUI. If what is
hanging is part of the GUI you won't see it when you boot to recovery
mode. Nevertheless, it may help.