Linux installation hangs on dual athlon MP

[Priit]

Hi,

I was trying to install RH 7.2 into dual athlon MP box (Asus mobo, 1Gb registered DDR RAM, Adaptec A2400 IDE RAID controller with 4x60Gb HDD's in RAID 5) but it always hangs in some installation phase. First I though maybe RAID controller isn't supported but that doesn't seem to be the case. It used to hang when formatting swap partition, but when I tried to install linux without swap, it hangs when copying packages (when about some hundred megabytes are copied). Graphical installer screen just will not be overdraw again and nothing happends, machine itself keeps running (I can switch between consoles, use shell etc). No errors will be reported either. Hardware should be fine cause it ran Win2k without problems. Any thoughts?

 

[n0cmonkey]

Try the text install. Try without the RAID controller (for s&g 🙂). Try another distro. ie, no clue 😉

 

[Armitage]

I've had a Linux install hang in the formatting or file copying phase when the IDE master/slave switch was set improperly on a zip drive. I was positive it was right, so it took me all day to find it 😱
Try it with a single stick of ram. If that hangs, try it with another stick. All those hard-drives ... maybe you have a bad cable?
Good luck.

 

[Nothinman]

Check all the virtual consoles for errors (I think 4 and 5 have debug output in RedHat).

Try the non-GUI installer.

Try passing 'noapic' to the kernel when booting, I know certain 760MP boards require this to run stable.

 

[Priit]

Thanks for tips guys, I'll check the IDE cables and jumpers tomorrow. There was no error log on consoles, I checked that first. I probably install linux into some HDD in another macine and try to run it from there...