Frustrating time trying to load Linux....

[BlindedByScience]

So, one of my new year activities (hate to call them "resolutions") was to spend some of my free time to learn more about Linux. To that end, I put together a system just for this purpose out of stuff I had in the shop. It's nothing fantastic but I'd think it should do the trick in spades; a P4 2.8G on a new Asus P4S800D-X motherboard (SIS 655X / 964 chipset) with two 128M sticks of ram, a WD PATA 80GB drive, a Matrox G550 video card, and a Samsung DVD-R optical drive. No OC on the system. It ran Memtest86+ overnight with no errors and the hard drive passes WD's diagnostic tests with no errors.

So far, I cannot get a Linux distro to load.

I started out with Fedora Core 6 (ISO image fc-6-i386-DVD.iso) on a DVD and went to it. The disk file has the correct SHA1SUM checksum, and the physical disk I burned passes the "self test" in the Fedora installer. I prepped the drive by running a disk wipe before booting the Fedora installer. I told the installer to "erase all partitions and set up a standard" partitioning scheme. All seems to go just fine until the system tries to re-boot post install. It randomly hangs at different places in the start up sequence as it's loading modules. What's weird is that it hangs in different places during boot....not consistent at all.

Frustrated with this, I downloaded the openSUSE distro from Novell (openSUSE-10.2-GM-DVD-i386.iso). Same care was taken with the burn and image verification to make sure I had a "good" DVD to load the OS with. It crashes during install saying it can't find one of the modules required (didn't write it down) at which time the installer piles up. At least it's consistent....

Pissed off late last night, I threw in my XP Pro disk and proceeded to load XP, flawlessly, the first time. It acquired all it's updates and ran some benchmarks all night without an issue. Sure leads me to believe that there's nothing wrong with the hardware......?? So, I'm not sure what to do next. I'll fiddle with the hardware in the XP environment a bit but the truth is it seems solid as can be.

I'd really like to get some "cockpit time" with an up to date Linux distro. Suggestions....??

 

[eeyrjmr]

without specific points when things failed noone is going to be able to help you unfortunetly

HAve you tried a liveCD (knoppix?) LiveCD's are fantastic at giving an OK to hardware

if knoppix boots fine then go back to FC6 and install (the fact that it installs show that BASE-fc is fine on yr system - the install is a linux-distro)

you might of selected something thinking it was relevant but it isn't and it causes problems

 

[BlindedByScience]

eeyrjmr - thanks for the reply.

Problem with Fedora is that I can't be specific as it locks up at different points during boot every time. If it stopped on the same module every time I'd say "ah ha...." and figure out what it's not happy with but there's no consistency at all. The openSUSE installer is clearly bogus and not real informative, I agree.

I'll try a Knoppix live CD and if it works out give a freshly downloaded Fedora install a try.

 

[swatbat]

Why only 256 ram? I would bump that up to at least 512(really a gig would be best).

Anyway I would download ubuntu 6.10. Thing boots like a live cd and with a few clicks you can have it install if you want. Ununtu takes a lot out of setting up linux which can be good and bad. If you want to get right in and start playing around it is good. You really want to learn the systems in linux from the ground up it is bad.

 

[LstBrunnenG]

May I suggest jumping in on the deep end and trying out Gentoo? It's a double-edged sword - you do most of the install yourself, so if the install freezes you'll know where and why. Also, by doing the install, you'll definately be learning about Linux.

The best Linux experience I've had so far though is definately Ubuntu 6.10.

Failing that, you might want to install XP temporarily just to run some Prime95. That, and do a google for MemTest, a windows program that tests memory. In my experience MemTest86+ has been useless; this program would spit out errors within five minutes while MemTest86+ would run for hours without a hitch.

 

[BlindedByScience]

Why only 256 ram? I would bump that up to at least 512(really a gig would be best).

...because it's all I had in the shop... I may spring for more later.....

OK, so the Knoppix live CD runs like the bomb.....no issues. I'll beat up on the hardware some more and download new distro images.....and try again.

 

[swatbat]

...because it's all I had in the shop... I may spring for more later.....

OK, so the Knoppix live CD runs like the bomb.....no issues. I'll beat up on the hardware some more and download new distro images.....and try again.

Yea then try ubuntu 6.10. As I said it boots like a live cd and then has a few click install. With it you want easyubuntu which is one of the quickest ways to add mp3/dvd etc playback along with some other basic things that are not included in the build. It also sets up the repository collections for downloading more apps.