25 replies to this topic

[twirlz]

i seem to have a problem installing red hat 9 on my box.
everything was going good then i left the room for a second and i come back and its sez that the install was terminated and it was safe to reboot.
now i didn't try to install again because of the time and that the cd running might keep me awake alnight. any suggestions on how i could get this distro up and running?

Thanks

[screamer]

Never seen anything quite like that happen, what are you running it on?

[White_Raven]

And did you pull a md5 on the isos to make sure they are what they should be in terms of un-currupted data?

[twirlz]

im running it on a compaq 475mhz with 310 ram it gets about a third of the way through and then it dies.

also about checking the iso before the installation even starts it has a process of checking the cds for corrput data on the cd. unless it won't show corupt data after the burn...

[feend]

Hey Twirlz,

Yeah with the CD test you are talking about make sure that the cds are not corrupted as white_raven mentioned. Did you do this for all 3 cds?

It sounds like you may have had a kernel panic. I'm not certain but I believe that during a kernel panic every tty is alerted. Was there any text on the screen that looked like it didn't belong there?

Try the installation again and if that same problem happens change to tty0(or whatever redhat calls the first terminal) by typing ctrl + alt + f1. You should see output on this terminal you normally wouldn't see with the GUI installer which may help.

*NOTE*
I kow it takes forever but during the partitioning stage of installation run a bad-block check for every partition to make sure that some bad spot on the disk isn't causing you problems.

Good Luck.

[White_Raven]

Ya, all cds have internal checking you can have it do when your booted to it, so you dont "have" to pull md5 on it.. however thats always a good idea.

[twirlz]

Hey Twirlz,

Yeah with the CD test you are talking about make sure that the cds are not corrupted as white_raven mentioned. Did you do this for all 3 cds?

It sounds like you may have had a kernel panic. I'm not certain but I believe that during a kernel panic every tty is alerted. Was there any text on the screen that looked like it didn't belong there?

Try the installation again and if that same problem happens change to tty0(or whatever redhat calls the first terminal) by typing ctrl + alt + f1. You should see output on this terminal you normally wouldn't see with the GUI installer which may help.

*NOTE*
I kow it takes forever but during the partitioning stage of installation run a bad-block check for every partition to make sure that some bad spot on the disk isn't causing you problems.

Good Luck.

yep i did it for all 3 cd's.

Thanks for the info, but if i have to change to tty0 after i hit ctrl+alt+f1 will there be something that will let me change it or do i need a command to do that?

would it also be a good idea to install in text rather than GUI?

[White_Raven]

text is always less resource intensive then gui.. may be at the very least it would speed it up a bit.

[feend]

Twirlz: ctrl + alt + f1 will is what allows you to change to the first virtual terminal

ctrl + alt + f7 will let you change back to the GUI installation screen


You can try a text install but I'm not sure if you still have access to some of the options available with the GUI installer.

[W1nt3rmut3]

the text, or the nucurses install, is just like a graphic. all the same stuff, just dont install X if you have to resort to nucurses!

[twirlz]

the text, or the nucurses install, is just like a graphic. all the same stuff, just dont install X if you have to resort to nucurses!

why woundn't i install X if i installed by text?

[twirlz]

well i tried again to install in text and the same thing happen. except it happen at 7% rather than 33%... it was some error i can't remember. i'll take a pic of it and post it so everyone can see.
i even made sure to check for bad blocks on my drive. found some so ended up formating back into ntfs and running scan disk to fix bad blocks then tried to install again and thats when the error shows up.

Feend: i was using what you told me the ctrl+alt+f2 i think opened bash, ctrl+alt+f3 open another sort of window that had info on the install and f4 was another window that had more info... well any who i was looking in those windows and during the install there was tons of error msgs showing up so maybe thats the problem and if that is it how would i fix that or should i chose a different distro?

Thanks for the help

[feend]

Hmm you can't post any of the error messages ? Or at least the device that was spitting out the error messages?

Windows installs fine on it?

It sounds like you will continue to have these problems with any distro but you may want to try some other redhat like distribution (mandrake maybe) until you get more familiar with Linux.

[StankDawg]

you know, funny, it sounds like I am having a similar problem myself. Windows XP runs fine on my box, and so does knoppix booted from CD (RAMDISK). But when I tried installing Mandrake 9.0 or 9.1 It dies with an "error writing to hard drive". I even tried an older Redhat 7.2 install and got a similar error. It happens everytime on the file copy process. The hardware detection works fine.

I thought it might be the MBR left over from windows, but I wiped that out and still get the error. I chalked it up to a dead/dying hard drive. Now I am wondering if there is a kernel bug.

[bland_inquisitor]

*cough* SuSE 8.2 roxorz *cough*

BTW: I tried to install mandrake 8.2 on my lappy a while back, and it apparently didnt like the DVD drive i have. It would take the whole hour or so to install, but after teh first boot, id get a message saying "some important packages didnt get installed" I know it wasnt the CD's as i had bought them (from staples for a penny... you know, that old chestnut) And for a control group, i formatted my main box and installed mandrake from the same CDs, and it worked great. It may be nothing, but its worth asking what kind of CD-rom drives are you installing from. Perhaps the 2.2 kernel (i think thats the one with mandrake 8.2 anyway) craps out on certain DVD drives. I had problems on my dell inspirion 8200's factory dvd rom drive, so if y'all are having problems with DVD roms, it may be worth looking into, or using a distro with an updated kernel (like SuSE 8.2). That may explain why knoppix 3.2 works for stank. *shrugs* worth a shot at any rate

EDIT: sorry, it just registered in my sleep-deprived brain that you are trying RH9. Oh well, I think my post still holds some relevance (like pimping SuSE:))

[twirlz]

Hmm you can't post any of the error messages ? Or at least the device that was spitting out the error messages?

Windows installs fine on it?

It sounds like you will continue to have these problems with any distro but you may want to try some other redhat like distribution (mandrake maybe) until you get more familiar with Linux.

i'm at work right now so i'm gonna do the install to get the error msgs for ya to see. actually its a second hdd in my box that i decided to put linux on. but ya windows installed and works absolutely fine ( or as fine as it can being windows) like what stank said could it be the boot sector that could be causeing this error. i've also saw that there is no option for a boot disk to linux. would that be better than lilo or grub?

the funny thing is.... i haven't gotten frusterated with this yet... i think before i started to talk here and learn as much as i have from here and RFA i probably wouldn't have even installed it again to get the error msgs

So thanks guys

[twirlz]

ok this is what i have from last night so called install of red hat 9.
it seems to be the whole process. its the anaconda dump

dump file

[feend]

Do you know if Windows is marking the bad blocks?

Reading through newsgroups and such I get the impression that either the hard drive or the ide cable is going bad.

When you did the bad block check did you allow Linux to mark them as bad or did you reboot to windows and try it that way? See what happens if you go through with all the bad block stuff when you are partitioning the disk.

Anyway something is borked on that second hard drive (hdb)

[twirlz]

well during the installation of red hat i did do the bad block check and thats when i find bad blocks.... it doesn't get off 0% and i have bad blocks. i have done scan disk on windows to fix the bad blocks and it sez that it does, then i try again to install red hat and it sez again that i have bad blocks. It is a huge possiblity that this hdd is going out... i thinks its been going out since the warrenty wore off! . but i tried to install mandrake last night and i installed up to the 3rd disk and there was an error ( silly me forgot to write down the error) some file created the error tho. so it seems like i'll either have to transfer everything from different box and install there or drop the dime and buy a new hdd.

[twirlz]

well i ended up getting red hat 9 installed on one of my boxes and i'm loving it, however i'm finding myself playing most of the games like when i got my first windows box. but thats a phase soon i will get bored of the games and then learn more about the system. however i have a question i want get connected to the net and all i have is AOL (plz no flame) and Compu Serve ( which i think is a part of AOL ). Now i have found some progys that are for aol and cs but i would only be able to download on my windows box. if i put it to floppy would linux read it fine since its a windows fs format. if not how else would i get those progys to my linux box?

Thanks