Linux installation headace

[jamin123]

I am so frustrated because I've been trying for a month to install Linux. I have 3Ghz system and a friend said he thinks it's crashing at firewire installation. My box doesn't have firewire and I am installing from 3 enterpize CD's. Some time it stop on disk2/disk3.

 

[n0cmonkey]

Did you burn these cds? Did the md5 sums match up on the isos? Any error messages?

 

[nweaver]

what distro? Have you tried a live CD?

 

[jamin123]

The CD's were loan to me by my Boss. They work fine at work. They are Linux Red Hat Enterpize workstation Cd's.
Also, I download Fedora 3 and have the same installation problem. I am sure it is problem with my hardware.

 

[n0cmonkey]

Details please.

 

[fatetheory]

You should try installing it with the minniumum packages. You might be lucky and it will install, then you can install package by package later when you get it working.

 

[jamin123]

I tried both default minnimum and customerise installation.

 

[Nothinman]

If the crashes are random you should verify your hardware works, the simplest place to start is memory by booting a copy of memtest86.

 

[jamin123]

Minimum installation works. The problem seems to be certain packages on disk 3 because it doesn't hang at on the same package each time.

 

[drag]

It's very common to have a error happen when burning cdroms.

When burning from linux it's always a good idea to compare the md5sums of your downloads and your finished disk.

Usually the md5sum is given to you in a form of a text file on the server were you downloaded the cdrom images. If your making a copy from a known good disk then you can get the md5sums off of that.

For example you download a iso image. You find he md5sums for the disks...

Then you run:
md5sum ramdumb.iso

and that spits out a number, it should match the indicated text file.

Then after you burn the image you can, if your using Linux or whatnot, but not in windows, use md5sum to check the cdrom image:
(the device names will differ from distro to distro)
md5sum /dev/cdrom

and that should match the md5sums from the original image.

That way you can be 95% certain that it's burnt correctly. Otherwise rates for successfully burning disks, especially 4 or more of them for a installation, is around 50-90% depending on the cdrom burner and how well the machine is set up.

If your using windows you can use the md5sum.exe program, but I don't know a easy way to verify a disk after it's been burnt.

 

[AlabamaCajun]

Go into your bios and disable the IEEE-1394 port. Unplug all USB devices (even USB mice). Plug the mouse into the PS2 Port(use the green usb-p2s adaptor for USB mouse).
I have to do this with my MSI RS480 board because the drivers are not on the CD and it crashes early in Install before I have a chance to add drivers. Once loaded I can install the ATI drivers and use the USB mouse and dongles. I had to do the same with Fedora 4-64. You may want to DL the DC4 set and install it, its a really nice OS, better than XP IMO.

 

[cquark]

Originally posted by: drag
It's very common to have a error happen when burning cdroms.

When burning from linux it's always a good idea to compare the md5sums of your downloads and your finished disk.

Agreed. The description of the install stopping on disk 3 package installation strongly suggests there's a flaky CD-ROM. Flaky CDs can behave slightly differently in different drives and environmental conditions. Also, if you're on package installation, you're well past the point where the install is analyzing your hardware, so it seems unlikely that it's related to a particular hardware device being recognized incorrectly.