First: This is great news! Why? It means that whatever the problem is, it is nothing
you did.
What else we actually know, so far:
- The booting problem ( OpenBSD, I can't help with Linux) has something to do with your hardware configuration on that laptop. This might be a BIOS setting, this might be Acer's unique interpretation of the ACPI standard, or this might be something else unique to that laptop's hardware configuration that the kernel cannot manage, or there might be an actual hardware problem. Of all of these, a BIOS setting or a strange implementation of ACPI are the most likely. BSDfan's suggestion of running memtest is to check for some types of hardware problems.
- The problem is not isolated to the RAMDISK's unique configuration, it affects GENERIC (or GENERIC.MP, which is what would have booted by default from my live media image) as well.
I've not seen your model of laptop mentioned on the misc@ mailing list. I've seen the 5520G, which might be the same, but it was only mentioned in an unrelated bug report for OpenBSD 4.3, not in the mailing list.
Don't give up entirely just yet. Here are two things to try, in order:
- Disable ACPI, and see if the kernel completes its boot. This should be considered temporary, unless that model of laptop also has APM support, because you'll need one or the other to keep from overheating -- they control the laptop fan(s). Steps shown below.
- Boot into your laptop's BIOS menu, and set everythoing to factory defaults. Perhaps there is a setting there that is causing difficulties. I don't know if that laptop uses SATA or PATA for its hard disk drive, but if if uses SATA, you might try setting the mode (if possible in the BIOS menus) to IDE or "legacy" mode.
If both of those lead you nowhere, still don't give up. You can try a snapshot of -current, rather than -release, and see if the symptoms change or the problem goes away. You could also file a
complete bug report with the OpenBSD Project. But you'll have to learn how. Those numbers and letters and gibberish you haven't bothered to post here, because they are confusing and difficult to manually write down and retype are very, very important. (A photograph of the console will help, if you can't connect a serial console to capture the text, and cannot manually write it all down then retype it.) All of the rest of the information required for a bug report will be needed on top of that, that are not clear from what you've posted here. Things like the architecture of OpenBSD you were booting. i386 and amd64 may run on the same hardware, but there are many differences under the covers. Here's are a few suggestions for guidance:
The serial console discussion in FAQ 4.16
The link to how to report a problem in that FAQ section.
Sections b. and c. in my wish list for new users, here:
http://www.daemonforums.org/showthread.php?t=596
Please do not submit a bug report using my Live Media, it is not "vanilla" OpenBSD. It uses the GENERIC kernel, but it has a modified /etc/rc subsystem to provide filesystems in RAM for key structures that are normally read/write, including /etc itself.
Disabling ACPI on boot.
Use the RAMDISK kernel from install media rather than live media. You don't want the latter if APM is not available on that laptop, because it takes a long time to boot and you risk overheating the laptop.
- Boot the kernel with the User Kernel Configurator option. At the boot> prompt, instead of waiting or pressing ENTER, type in "-c" and then press ENTER. The kernel will load, not check any hardware, put up only a few starting lines of the dmesg, and then give you a UKC> prompt.
- At the first UKC> prompt, type in "disable acpi" and then press ENTER. You should get a second UKC> prompt. At that prompt, now type "enable apm" -- I'm not sure if it's enabled by default any more. If it is, this won't hurt.
- At the third UKC> prompt, type in "quit" and then press ENTER. If the kernel boots, you will get to an Install, Update or Shell prompt. You can say "Yeeehah!" at that point. Drop into the shell.
- Inspect your dmesg(8). Look to see if you have APM if ACPI is disabled. If so, you may safely install and run without ACPI. You can disable ACPI permanently with config(8).