Error Messages
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Error messages explained Error messages Explained Graham Morrison decodes the secret meaning behind the most common Linux error messages and helps you cure the problems in the process. ome people are scared of Linux understand and rarely helpful. Which is a pity, back on track. We’ve chosen areas we think are because the error messages it because the vast majority of problems can be the most problematic. These include booting produces seem to imply the coming solved quite easily, and a considerable number problems, general software usage, the filesystem, S of the apocalypse. And there’s a great involve the same problems recurring again and networking and distro installation. number of them. If you search for the word again. In business speak, these are low-hanging We’ve picked a few of the most common errors ‘Error’ in our forums, you get more than 150 fruit. And it’s these problems we want to target. from each, and explained what’s happening along pages of results. That’s a lot of people You shouldn’t need to be a Linux expert to get with the solution. The intention is that even if the experiencing a lot of problems. your machine to boot, or a programmer to play a problems don’t apply to you, you can get an idea The biggest difficulty for these users isn’t the movie file. Yet it’s this level of expertise that most of how and why Linux error messages might seem number of error messages; it’s trying to get error messages seem to assume of their users. We arcane and a little intimidating. And hopefully, something useful out of them. What does ‘Kernel want to demystify these common errors, and this will leave you with the knowledge to find a Oops’ mean, for example, or ‘PCI Can’t Allocate’? provide solutions that should help ordinary Linux better solution that might help you to solve your Linux error messages are obtuse, difficult to users side-step the problem and get their machine own problems. Distro installation very Linux distribution has a different installation system BIOS, and change the boot order from there. You can routine, and each creates problems. Ubuntu might work usually find the option under the ‘Boot’ menu, and you will need to Efor one machine and not for another. A machine with a save these changes to be able to boot from the optical drive. This working Ubuntu installation may not work with Fedora, or is the same procedure you would use if you needed to boot from OpenSUSE, or Linux Mint, or Mandriva… an external drive or USB stick, which can be just as useful if you find yourself in an internet cafe or in front of a corporate machine. ERROR Can’t boot from CD/DVD If you’re new to Linux, this is often your first experience of the ERROR PCI: cannot allocate operating system: you insert your new disc into the drive and There are many errors like this, and they mostly occur at boot restart the machine, only to be greeted by the same operating time. They all share the same cause – badly behaved power system you were using before. The problem is that your hard drive management. The culprit is something called ACPI, the Advanced has a higher boot priority than your optical drive. Many modern Configuration and Power Interface. Despite being a standard for BIOSes include a boot menu from where you can change the power management, it has been causing problems for over ten priority of your devices on the fly – try pressing the ‘Escape’ key or years. The trouble is that hardware drivers have a habit of not fully F12 when you first see something on the screen. From there, you implementing the specification. Whenever your machine’s power can simply choose to boot from the optical drive. management spins into action, such as when you turn on your Older machines might not have the same facility. You will then machine, or resume from sleep, certain devices cause problems. need to press either the F2 or ‘Del’ key at boot time to enter the Live CD installations make this problem worse, because they don’t have the luxury of probing for exact hardware matches when they boot, or including every possible driver for every device, which is why this problem often occurs when installing off a Live CD. There’s only one thing you can do – turn off ACPI. You can sometimes do this from your system BIOS, but if not, you’ll need to disable ACPI at boot time. Press Escape when booting to enter Occasionally, the Grub menu and select the option you normally use. Go down you will need to to the line that starts with kernel and press E to edit the line. At the change the device boot priority to be end of this line add acpi=off noapic, press return and B to start able to boot a Live the boot process. You should find that your machine boots without Linux distro from problems, and if you go on to install Linux, your distro should make your optical drive. a better job of choosing the correct drivers for the installation. 46 Linux Format September 2008 LXF109.errors Sec2:46 7/7/08 15:10:36 Error messages explained Booting problems here’s nothing worse than an error that stops your scroll even further down the file until you find the Screen section. system booting – mainly because you’re now without You need to delete all the high screen resolutions here, as we’re Tyour primary problem solving tool. Yet booting looking for the lowest common denominator (we’d suggest problems are common. This is because we all like to install removing any resolution larger than 1024x768). You’ll be able to distributions, and we often run more than one on a single increase the resolution from the desktop when you get your machine, as well as share a hard drive with Windows. Any one screen working. If neither of these methods work, the last failsafe of these installations can mess up the boot routine, and getting option is to change the ‘Device’ driver to “vesa”, sidestepping your a working installation back isn’t always so easy. graphics drivers entirely. ERROR Grub… ERROR Kernel panic! If this is all you see when you turn on your machine, the Grub boot A ‘Kernel panic’ or ‘Kernel oops!’ message is the closest us Linux menu has been corrupted. This is the part of your Linux users get to the Blue Screen Of Death that still haunts Windows installation that’s responsible for booting the operating system. users. And like the Windows equivalent, there’s very little you can And the only thing you can do is boot Linux off some other media, do when one occurs other than hold down the power button. The preferably a Live Linux CD. When you get to the desktop, open a kernel is at the heart of your Linux system, and a panic is usually command line terminal, switch to the administrator account and caused by misbehaving hardware forcing the kernel into type grub. This next step will also work if your Grub menu entries uncharted areas of your system’s memory. The best solution is a no longer point to your Linux partition. kernel upgrade, as the hardware problem may have been solved in Type find /boot/grub/stage1. This is searching for the a newer version. But you may need to revert to an older version of location of the original boot drive, and it should return something the kernel from your boot menu to be able to use Linux, to then along the lines of (hd0,0) – this is Grub’s own syntax for the install the upgrade. location of the hard drive, and this is dependent on your own The other option is to identify the offending hardware. If you’ve installation, so don’t assume it’s going to be (hd0,0). You should just made a hardware change or installed a new driver, this is likely now type root (hd0,0) (or your equivalent) to tell Grub which to be the culprit. Otherwise, you might have to resort to removing partition is being used to boot from, followed by setup (hd0) to each piece of hardware in turn and seeing if your machine boots. reinstall the boot loader into the disk’s master boot record. You Despite the reams of output from a kernel panic error, there’s should then be able to restart your machine and boot normally. usually very little the average user can understand, as the original error has sent the kernel in a completely random direction. ERROR Incorrect username or password You’d be surprised at just how many readers phone us to say they’ve forgotten their password, or even worse, promise they’ve never been asked for one. Fortunately, all is not lost. You need to boot your machine into single-user or recover mode. To do this, press the Escape key as soon as your computer leaves the BIOS screen on startup. This will show the Grub boot menu. If there isn’t the option to boot into either a single user or recovery mode, choose the kernel that normally boots (usually top of the list), and press E to edit the boot parameters. Move to the line that begins kernel, then press E again to edit the text on that line. Make sure the cursor is at the end of the line and add the following: rw init=/bin/bash.