blasted linux newbie

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nameless_centurian

Gawd
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Apr 4, 2003
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a blasted linux newbie....

:rolleyes: i am, i am. *shakes elbows*

anyway...

i have this machine i built out of spare parts... :)

AMD T-Bird 800hz
Ati 32mb AGP card (also tried it with a 32 Mb TNT2)
Maxtor 20GB hard drive
no-name NIC
256 MB no-name SDRAM
no-name floppy drive
the mobo is made by FIC VIA KT133 chipset

well, it powers up just fine..:(

i've tried this with about 3 distros...but recently, i've been wanting to get this retro version of REDHAT to work. RedHat 7.3, i think. it doesn't matter, though..i get similar results no matter what distro.:mad:

so i boot off of the CD. at first, i was getting signal 11. so i passed the option MEM=128 (when i had 128 MB ram in it) when it went to boot the kernel.

this caused it to freeze time and time again.:eek:

i bought 128 MB more ram and put it in.

no more signal 11 problems.
:D

so now it boots up, but AFTER LOADING THE KERNEL FROM THE CD.....it can't find the install media (the cd it booted from)...:(

i've tried 4 different CD drives...i've tried 3 different hard drives..i've tried 3 different distros...i've tried both IDE controllers...same thing each time..it can;t find the installation cd

what the heck is going on?
 
Try using Slackware and booting off of floppies, thus you should be able to get the system up without using a CD. Then you can see if you're at all able to mount the CD drive...
 
Originally posted by ameoba
Try using Slackware and booting off of floppies, thus you should be able to get the system up without using a CD. Then you can see if you're at all able to mount the CD drive...
Click to expand...


:eek: how will i load the CD drivers? will the boot disks come with the drivers loaded?:(

what is odd is that this installation worked on the same machine just in the spring time..it worked like a charm, then :cool:
 
only thing i can think of is to check that plug and pray is turned off in the bios...
 
i was told to try a PCI IDE controller to rememedy the situation...

a guy at school thinks my controllers are bad..

is he off his rocker?
 
Try a newer distro.
There may be some "quirks" with your IDE controller that weren't corrected in that ancient (Feb 25, 2002) kernel you're booting now. ;)

I had similar problems trying to install an old version of Red Hat on an EPIA board. But after getting a newer version it booted (and installed) fine.
 
Don't bother downloading ALL of slackware; just get the boot floppies. Maybe something like tomsrtbt disk would probably be good enough to see if it's at all possible to mount a CD.


There's always a possibility that your IDE controller's going out but, at that point, it's generally best to start looking for a new motherboard.
 
okay, so i didn't have time to download slack, yet...

but i downloaded a redhat boot disk..it's basically just the install program on floppy...

it still does not recognize the CD drive after loading the kernel.


something odd, though-

i have the IDE detection stuff set to "auto"

shouldn't the BIOS list the CD drive as being present on one of the IDE channels?

it lists the hard drive as being present, but not the cd drive...

i've even tried on seperate channels and such...it never sees it..
i seem to remember seeing the CD drive listed in the BIOS on other machines...

btw, i HAVE tried other cd drives...

another btw, i tried installing it on an old p2 i have here...worked beautifully...but the p2 is being used, and i would really like to get my frankenstein running.

thanks, guys.


--edit

also while messing around in the BIOS, i did not find options to turn off plug and play...

i did however shut off some other stuff, even though i have no clue what it does..

i disabled internal/external CPU caches, video bios shadowing...stuff of the sort...i even tried with "performance default" loaded
 
have you checked the jumper settings on the cd drive? bios doens't have to recognize it for linux to use it, but generally if bios doesn't see it, something's up...

when booting up check the boot logs to see what it says, if you get that far... see if it recognizes your cdrom and what device it's attempting to call it...

i know with a pci ide card, you're gonna have problems getting linux to see it right in older linux distros... i had that problem when i first got my gateway 500mhz.. came with a controller card and linux didn't know what to do with it until you patched the kernel

try a newer os, or even try dloading linuxcare's bootable disk recovery image (50mg cd image) and see if it sees it...
 
yeah, the jumpers are right.

like i said, it boots the cd...

knoppix booted fine off of it....

very odd, very odd.


no, i still don't have a PCI controller...it was only an option someone told me to try

if i spend the time downloading a new distro, is there a good chance that things will work more nicely?
 
Originally posted by nameless_centurian


i disabled internal/external CPU caches, video bios shadowing...stuff of the sort...i even tried with "performance default" loaded
Click to expand...


NEVER disabl eCPU cache. It will make your machine a DOG!!. Since Knoppix boots, and nothing else does it is defiantely a problem with the old versions of the kernel you're trying to load, and the chipset isn't properly supported.
 
hey, thanks... i think i'll download a new distro, then...


i'll take your word for it, but it still baffles me as to how redhat installed and ran well about a year ago but now the machine won't even install college linux, a slackware-based distro..

oh well.

guess i'll get to downloading a distro as soon as i find the time

thanks, guys.

keep the thread alive if you have any more suggestions. i'll keep looking at it
 
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