Trying to try Kubunto...

[Ben Scott]

On 2/27/07, Brian Chabot <brian at datasquire.net> wrote:
> I burned the CD, verified the burn and put it in the CDROM of the laptop
> and rebooted.....

  Have you tried the CD in another system, just to make sure, for
sure, that the CD is good?

> cp: unable to open '/root/var/log/': No such file or directory
> mount: Mounting /root/dev on /dev/.static/dev failed: No such file or
> directory

  This sounds like a filesystem did not mount.  In particular, that
the initrd failed to mount or pivot the "real" root filesystem.

  If you shut off all the GUI boot and frame buffer crap (I don't know
the details on this for *buntu, but most distros have a way to do it),
is there anything else that looks like an interesting error message?
With kernel frame buffer support turned off, you should be able to
[SHIFT]+[PAGE UP] all the way to the first line of the kernel boot.

> Looking around online this error (the PCI line) is supposed to indicate
> that the PCI device is probably unseated or otherwise foobar.

  The PCI complaint may have nothing to do with the boot failure.  I
don't think I've ever seen a system that Linux didn't complain about
*something* the BIOS or motherboard did wrong.  Most usually work fine
anyway.  (I'm not saying the PCI error *cannot* be a symptom of the
problem, just that it *may* be a red herring.)

> A reboot into Mandriva (which works fine) tells me
[...]
> PCI: Cannot allocate esource region 0 of device 000:05:06.0

  That would seem to imply that the PCI error is survivable.

-- Ben