Chapter 5. Booting the Installation System Check if there are any error messages after that command. A “1” in the first column after using_dma means it is enabled. If it is, try disabling it: $ echo -n "using_dma:0" >settings Make sure that you are in the directory for the device that corresponds to your CD-ROM drive. If you have problems and the kernel hangs during the boot process, doesn’t recognize peripherals you actually have, or drives are not recognized properly, the first thing to check is the boot parameters, as discussed in Section 5.3. In some cases, malfunctions can be caused by missing device firmware (see Section 2.2 and Section 6.4). During the boot sequence, you may see many messages in the form can’t find something , or something not present , can’t initialize something , or even this driver release depends on something . Most of these messages are harmless. You see them because the kernel for the installation system is built to run on computers with many different peripheral devices. Obviously, no one computer will have every possible peripheral device, so the operating system may emit a few complaints while it looks for peripherals you don’t own. You may also see the system pause for a while. This happens when it is waiting for a device to respond, and that device is not present on your system. If you find the time it takes to boot the system unacceptably long, you can create a custom kernel later (see Section 8.6). If you get through the initial boot phase but cannot complete the install, the menu option Save de- bug logs may be helpful. It lets you store system error logs and configuration information from the installer to a disk or download them using a web browser. This information may provide clues as to what went wrong and how to fix it. If you are submitting a bug report, you may want to attach this information to the bug report. Other pertinent installation messages may be found in /var/log/ during the installation, and /var/log/installer/ after the computer has been booted into the installed system. 42 5.4.4. Reporting Installation Problems 5.4.3. Interpreting the Kernel Startup Messages 5.4.2. Boot Configuration • Check if DMA is currently enabled: • If there are any problems during the installation, try checking the integrity of the CD-ROM using the option near the bottom of the installer’s main menu. This option can also be used as a general test if the CD-ROM can be read reliably. $ cd /proc/ ide / hdc $ grep using_dma settings using_dma 1 0 1 rw