Debain Not loading

[Absent Minded]

I don't too often suggest to someone needing a stable system that they try testing instead of stable. It might in this case be something worth trying. As you have mentioned to me that Ubuntu didn't have this kind of issue with your system. I am going to step out on a limb here since nothing else is working. Maybe your system needs to have a few newer base files. Squeeze (and Ubuntu) have newer versions of Grub, kernel, udev, acpi, ect. So with the idea that Squeeze will be the new stable soon (still a few months off) and that nothing else is helping, personally, I would give it a shot. If you lived through Ubuntu's bugs okay, then Squeeze's remaining bugs shouldn't pose too much of an issue for you.

Sorry, concidering what you have asserted to me about your hardware being completely "okay" I don't see much for remaining options other than getting your base files upgraded in some fassion. In this case, I think Squeeze is a reasonable thing to try. Obviously, you can't go on forever with your system only working 1/3rd of the time.

[jheaton5]

Go back to the beginning and read Absent Minded and craigevil's posts. Respond to their questions. I suspect that you have a hard drive problem. It certainly is not a grub problem.

[jheaton5]

@Absent Minded. I didn't see your latest post before I posted. Hopefully intelaravind will stay with you until he gets the issue resolved.

@intelaravind be sure to perform all the tests and provide all the information requested. Stay with one helper so you don't get confused or spend a lot of time going down a wrong path. Absent Minded and/or Craigevil have a lot of experience troubleshooting debian systems. Trust them.

[Absent Minded]

Not a problem jheaton5, thanks for your vote of confidence.
****

intelaravind, You stated that you had an Nvidia card/chipset in your computer. I however can not see it listed in your lspci output. Granted, I am not firmilier with what the -nn switch does to the output. I will have to look it up. Either way your video card, I doubt, has anything to do with the boot issue. Unless of course it is taking the resources needed by your hard drive controllers (I have seen this happen and is not extreamly uncommon).

[nadir]

Alert! /dev/sdb3 does not exist. Dropping a shell,

Check your /etc/fstab
I had wrong entries in /etc/fstab, sometimes it booted, sometimes it didn't.
(Once you are at it check /boot/grub/device.map too).
Just an idea, easy to check , then go on with what Absent suggests.

[intelaravind]

my fstab is correct.

[intelaravind]

Thanks for all those who are giving advise. I really want to learn a linux system, so that tomm i can support the community with my own contributions. and that is why i installed debian. Although it had some problems (not this one), i corrected some of my own, which helped me to get some idea (.00001%) of a linux system. Once again that you for all.


)I found one interesting thing. If i shutdown from debian, it has a 90% chance of loading correctly. But if i restart the change goes to 40%

By the way, if there is any stuff, like a good pdf on debian administration, which i can understand and learn, i would like to have a copy of it or name of it.

[intelaravind]

I once again tried with rootdelay. now its working perfectly. can anyone tell what this root delay is for? and what are the other options like this?

[praka123]

I once again tried with rootdelay. now its working perfectly. can anyone tell what this root delay is for? and what are the other options like this?

great ,if it worked .rootdelay parameter is used to set a delay(in seconds) ,so that your hard disks can be detected and settled .
http://www.gnu.org/software/grub/manual ... index.html
Regards,
PK

PS:Is your system new? OR How Much old are your hard disks?

Hi ,
since ,I don't want to make the Seniors their angry ,I'm PMing My Reply to your post below.

No that did not fix it

this is the exact o/p when busy box come


Loading please wait....
Aave up waiting for rrot device. common problems:
- Boot args (cat /proc/cmdline)
-chk root delay
chk rott -

-Missing moudles cat /proc/modules

Alert! /dev/sdb3 does not exist. Dropping a shell,


then busy box comes

This happens mostly with a failing disk;if not,
1)do you have any usb drive attached while system is booting?If yes,try removing that device and boot.
2)Another probability is ,there is not enough time to probe for your hard disks.
You can append "rootdelay=30" (upto 300 is allowed) appended to the grub line "kernel /boot/...vmlinuz ro ..." for this distro and boot again.
With Intel 945 boards ,"rootdelay=90" is used as a fix(ref:ubuntu bts)
and ,I just googled out this.have a look:
http://www.dedoimedo.com/computers/ubun ... d-bug.html
^this also talks about updating initramfs etc.

regards,
pk