Linux-based treadmill system
Linux-based treadmill system
Hi, I see you're having issues with your Star Trac ETrxe treadmill. It seems the screen tries to boot but then freezes on the 'star trac' logo in the top left corner, displaying "unable to boot!!". You mentioned checking the BIOS, memory, and SATA flash drive, and even reconnecting them. Could you share more details about the symptoms or any error codes? Also, let me know if you're using a Linux-based OS—some troubleshooting steps might differ.
Yes, there is typically a bootloader prompt displayed during startup.
Hey there! Just joining the discussions. If you're worried about data loss, maybe back up everything first—just copy a few files and test them elsewhere. Changing anything directly on the original drive could break your warranty. Tech support might be able to assist if you need further guidance.
Hi thanks for the quick response, yes it runs through the boot load, I can press esc and go into the 'grub' but Ive never done anything on Linux and very limited on Microsoft. It's a second hand machine that I've bought so no need to w about the warranty, I've got a feeling tech support have already looked at it as someone has written on the back 'fried cmos?' but that seems as if he wasn't sure really. Lol
I've taken this information from another discussion about that treadmill. As far as I understand, it's running on Ubuntu 5.0.10 with OS version 4.0. The challenge I'm facing is that the whole system operates from RAM stored in the vmlinuz/vmlinux file. While I can examine its contents with binwalk, changing anything in RAM isn't possible with my current modifications, and updating those files back into the original file is quite complicated.
Grub acts as the bootloader, and you haven’t yet installed Linux. You should specify the location of the Linux kernel for Grub to recognize it, and indicate the path to your system root (the Linux version of a drive). This method is more intuitive than using a live CD and lets you quickly check if the flash storage is functional without relying on the BIOS display. The vmlinuz file contains the actual Linux kernel and resides in /boot/grub/grub.cfg.
Without going too deep into it (since this whole topic is a minefield), it seems you have a device that boots from the initrd. As I said, this topic is a minefield, as suggested above make backups and work from those, one wrong move and you'll lose everything. The reason that other person couldn't change the contents of RAM is because the contents are stored in the vmlinuz file as a tar/squashfs and any changes made to the contents of it are simply reset everytime you reboot and the initrd is re-extracted. It CAN be done, its whether or not you want to take the time. Essentially you need to extract the tar out, edit it as required then squash it back up and replace the OG tar with the modified one. *FYI this is a best guess, I have no idea how it works in reality since I've never seen it* Of course there's no guarantee that other person was correct in their assessment or that your problem even relates to the initrd at all. I'm not 100% sure but IIRC Linux Kernel 5 made changes to the way initrd works which might throw a spanner into the works if you wanted to get something more modern running on it.