Greetings. My laptop (Thinkpad T60, 2GB RAM, from the time when they were still IBM-branded) hangs when I try to boot Sculpt OS. It gets to the logo and… nothing. I adjusted the BIOS settings to what is reported to be the most optimal for it in accordance with the documentation as well as some notes from other Thinkpad users. Seems to receive no input from the keyboard and shows no activity, so I assume it to be A. a lack of RAM (sad!) or B. a device probing that something goes wrong during. How do I proceed with this?
WRT RAM issues, this kind of behavior typically arises as a result of those, but I’d be surprised if 2 GB wasn’t enough in this case.
I’ve encountered this issue before. The fact that the logo appears and nothing else shows up is not caused by a freeze or insufficient RAM. One of the core drivers (most likely the network driver) has probably not been initialized correctly. To resolve this, you should try enabling serial output so you can see which driver is causing the problem.
Alright, got it. I’ll get on with that when I can. In the meanwhile, are only the necessary drivers initialized? That is, if no device is detected, will a driver be loaded?
ED: Whoops, didn’t mean to do that.
(I’m certain the answers to those questions are fairly obvious, but it never hurts to ask).
Specific drivers are supported in Sculpt. For example, the e1000 and rt8169 drivers are available for networking. In my experience, if the required hardware is not present at all, the system continues to work normally and simply does not use that driver. However, if a driver exists but does not fully match the hardware, or if it is not given enough resources, the system can completely hang during the loading stage.
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Okay, thank you.
If it is indeed a driver issue, I suppose “just getting it to start” should be as simple as disabling the related device if possible, then.
I’ll try to get some useful information out of the machine when I can and send it here along with a description of whatever troubleshooting steps will be taken at that time.
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My laptop (Thinkpad T60, 2GB RAM, from the time when they were still IBM-branded) hangs when I try to boot Sculpt OS.
The oldest x86_64 system that is somewhat actively supported starts at an Thinkpad X201 and I would not recommend trying to run Sculpt OS on an even older machine (it should be technically feasible but is questionable from a practical standpoint, especially considering your machine contains only 2 GiB RAM).
How do I proceed with this?
You may take a look at another thread Build / downloaded img freezes on chromebook that references an older debug image that will give you LOG message over a serial connection.
In case your T60 does not have Intel AMT SOL using a serial ExpressCard adapter also works fine.
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I’m pretty sure that your T60 has a 32-bit CPU whereas the official Sculpt image uses a 64-bit kernel.
If you are venturesome, you may try building a Sculpt image from source using a build directory configured for x86_32 and using a KERNEL that supports that architecture. E.g., KERNEL=nova. Before going all-in with building Sculpt, however, I would recommend building and testing a simpler image at first, e.g,. ‘make run/demo KERNEL=nova BOARD=pc’, copying the resulting .iso to a USB-stick and try booting it on your T60. Note that the installable packages offered by Genode Labs are published only for x86_64 and arm_v8a. So for an x86_32 variant of Sculpt OS, someone else (you?) would need to build and publish those packages.
Should you take the challenge, I’d be happy to give you feedback about trying your image on my T43.
According to Lenovo, all T60 models use Core 2 Duo/Solo CPUs that came with x86-64 enabled. But still, these devices our almost 20 years old and not actively supported by Sculpt OS.
Back when I used it for testing purposes, my R61 ran my (custom) Genode builds just like my more recent T430 etc. IIRC the R61 has 2 GB of RAM and dual Core 2 duo’s… So it all sounds like Sculpt OS might run on the (supposedly similar) T60, if 2 GB RAM is enough ? More wind in the sails of the “try serial output” advice…
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