odd stuff with grub 2

[homoludens]

For some time now I have been getting the 'address space collision' error early in the boot cycle on my Linux systems running on an intel atom/nvidia ion platform. This of course is livable with. However something odd happened with TC when I upgraded to grub 2 ver 1.99 from ver 1.98.

When configuring the grub.cfg with gfxpayload=keep I keep my lovely bg picture to grub until it gracefully hands over to the desktop. This conceals the verbose error-reporting stuff during the boot process. Curiously after upgrading to grub 2 ver 1.99 my lovely bg image disappears early in the boot cycle and some odd TC graphics appears along with the 'address space collision' error. The TC graphics occupies the top of my screen with wispy smoke and the words Tiny Core run from left to right in large letters. V. odd and annoying as I would like a smooth transition from my grub gui to the desktop gui.

Any ideas folks? I suppose I could just get defeatist and go back to ver 1.98. On the other hand it would be nice to get to the bottom of this odd behaviour.

[Rich]

Hi homoludens
I recommend you start by looking at the output of   dmesg   and track down the source of that
collision error. It's possible the new revision of grub is reacting with the error instead of simply
concealing "the verbose error-reporting stuff during the boot process."

[homoludens]

The Linux forums do have this issue appearing rather a lot - it would appear to be an issue with the proprietary driver from nvidia running on certain platforms. I believe with systems that have onboard or embedded graphics and therefore share memory the driver seems to produce this non-critical memory addressing error. It occurs pretty much on all my Linux systems running the proprietary driver. That however doesn't explain the TC wierdness when booting with the later version of grub 2; I wonder if there is a kernel parameter that I can use that might avert the graphical intrusion or a tweak to grub.cfg itself perhaps? I'm already getting that all too familiar bad feeling with this one.

I've learnt that there are quite a lot of things in Linux that it is best just to tip-toe around in the end.

[maro]

Are you using a 'vga=...' boot code?

Because if I would specify a boot code like 'vga=791' when booting from the CD-ROM (and therefore using ISOLINUX instead of GRUB2 as boot loader) I would end up seeing something which sounds like your original description (..."with wispy smoke and the words Tiny Core run from left to right in large letters...") for the roughly the period during which the kernel boots and until control gets handed over to '/init' (or rather '/etc/init.d/tc-config').

[homoludens]

No this is my grub.cfg:

Code: [Select]

insmod ext2
set root='(hd0,1)'
search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set=root e23402e9-d6df-4c19-867c-2b1f623a9206
if loadfont /boot/grub/unicode.pf2 ; then
  set gfxmode=auto
  set gfxpayload=keep
  insmod gfxterm
  insmod video
  insmod vbe
  if terminal_output gfxterm ; then true ; else
    # For backward compatibility with versions of terminal.mod that don't
    # understand terminal_output
    terminal gfxterm
  fi
fi

insmod ext2
set root='(hd0,1)'
search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set=root e23402e9-d6df-4c19-867c-2b1f623a9206
insmod png
if background_image /boot/grub/beyond-the-clouds.png ; then
  set color_normal=white/black
  set color_highlight=yellow/black
else
  set menu_color_normal=cyan/blue
  set menu_color_highlight=white/blue
fi

set timeout=5


menuentry "Microcore-3.8" {
insmod ext2

set root=(hd0,1)
 linux /boot/bzImage tce=LABEL=microOS/mc-ext restore=LABEL=microOS/mc-hm noswap kmap=uk TZ=GMT acpi_enforce_resources=lax waitusb=10 quiet --
 initrd /boot/microcore.gz
}
The key seems to be that with the earlier version of grub2 TC interrupts with a text-only error report which does not interfere with my grub splash screen whereas with ver 1.99 it interrupts with a text + graphics error report - and it is this that switches off my splash screen. It is v. annoying but as I say I could return to 1.98 although I only have one system with this version now. TC has 1.99 in its repository.

[Rich]

Hi homoludens

linux /boot/bzImage tce=LABEL=microOS/mc-ext restore=LABEL=microOS/mc-hm noswap kmap=uk TZ=GMT acpi_enforce_resources=lax waitusb=10 quiet --

What's the   --   at the end of the line for?

if loadfont /boot/grub/unicode.pf2 ; then
  set gfxmode=auto
  set gfxpayload=keep.....

Are you sure it's finding  unicode.pf2?

[homoludens]

Yes Rich the 'if' conditional has to be evaluating to true otherwise it would not go to gfxmode and grub would not display the background image. I suspect the vbe module in the newer version of grub may be the nuts and bolts of it so will probably return to 1.98 for now. Thanks all the same.