• We’re currently investigating an issue related to the forum theme and styling that is impacting page layout and visual formatting. The problem has been identified, and we are actively working on a resolution. There is no impact to user data or functionality, this is strictly a front-end display issue. We’ll post an update once the fix has been deployed. Thanks for your patience while we get this sorted.

Linux Newbie...Downloading RedHat 7.2

CrazyHelloDeli

CrazyHelloDeli

Platinum Member
I have enigma-i386-disc1 and 2.iso coming down the pipe as I type this, and I see two other ISO's listed in CuteFTP named enigma-SRPMS-disc1 and 2.iso. What are those and do I need them?😀
 
Those contain the source files for the RPM's on the other two CD's. If you plan on compiling your own RPM's, then you need them. If not, don't worry about them.
 
what do you mean you see like 25 more images? .. just burn the 2 iso's you have to discs, and boot up with disc1, and you should be good to go .. good luck ..
-neural
 
I can't boot from disc 1. I have an unformatted hard drive as master and CDROM as slave on IDE 1, set to boot from CDROM,C,A. I am not too experienced with building PCs, but the Redhat site says it should boot from Disc 1. Is there something else I should be doing? One thing that seems odd is that the BIOS drive autodetect occurs every startup. Shouldn't it get saved? If the clock is correct does that mean the CMOS battery is OK? This is an old Gigabyte GA-586HX that has been dormant for about a year.

Also, is there a way to check the disc 1 without Linux? The Redhat site says to run a checksum program from the linux prompt, but I don't have linux yet! After I downloaded it I dragged it down onto a CDROM in Adaptec Easy CD Creator 4. I just noticed that the default format is Joliet. Could that be the problem? I really don't know what the heck the ISO image stuff means. Thanks.
 
Yes, the autodetect should happen every time you boot. There are programs like this one that will do md5sum's in Windows. Do that first to make sure your ISO is ok. The Joliet file format should be ok. It would help if you could put the exact error message you get when you try to boot from the CD.
 
Thanks Heisenberg, that MD5 program worked great. Amazingly, I get the proper checksum.

After the PCI device listing, I get
"Boot from ATAPI CD-ROM : Failure ...

I set up the hard drive in the BIOS "IDE HDD AUTO DETECTION " menu, so now on bootup it only autodetects the CDROM. The CDROM is listed in the System Information Box as Pri. Slave Disk : CDROM, Mode 4.

When booting from a Windows 95 Startup disc, after formatting the hard disc I can now access the hard drive but not the CDROM. Should I try to get Windows drivers for the CD-ROM so I can access it to see if it is functioning? It is a new Genica 48X (their website says "OEM from a major manufacturer").

 
You should be able to boot from the CD. To burn the CD, you went to File>Record CD from Image (or something similar) in EasyCD? If you're sure the CD is ok, you can make RedHat boot floppies. On disc 1, look for images>boot.img. That's the image for a boot floppy. Then look for dosutils>rawrite.exe. That will write the image to a floppy. Just double click it and enter the source file name (e:\images\boot.img in my case) and then the destination floppy drive. Then put the floppy and CD in and have the comp boot from the floppy. Good luck.
 
I made a boot floppy and got to a menu with a boot: prompt. Since I only have 8 megs of memory, I entered "text". Should 8 megs be OK without using a GUI? The Redhat site is pretty wishywashy about listing a memory requirement, but somewhere I saw that 32 MB is need for 7.2.

It says "Loading initrd.img", then after a few seconds, it says Error, insert another disc and press a key. I tried loading initrd.img onto a floppy with rawrite, inserting it and hitting a key, but the system just hangs up. I tried entering expert with the same results.
 
8 megs may not be enough, even without a GUI. How much hard drive space do you have? You need at least probably 500 megs for a bare minimum install. What exactly are you planning on using this computer for? The reason I'm asking is there may be other ways to do what you're trying to (unless you just want to play with Redhat).
 
That's a good question. I mostly just want to use it on an old computer for web access, as well as to get familiar with Linux. I thought Linux would be a good cheap easy system to run well on old hardware, but so far it's not too easy. Is there much other software for it? So far I haven't seen much. Maybe I should just give up and go to Windows.

The hard drive is 6 gigs, and I'll look on ebay for more memory.

I did look through the old Deja (Google Groups) and found a lot on the initrd.img problem. One person said Red Hat said to use liloboot.img, but that is in the FTP sites under version 5.2 I think. Another said that discs made with rawrite are very touchy. So I think I'll try to make another disc on a Windows ME computer. The first one was on a Windows 95 machine. Rawrite didn't work at all under NT 4.0.
 
Now I have a good boot disc. I can read it from Windows ME, it has several files including initrd.img. I tried it on an 8 MB 486 and it told me that I don't have enough memory to install RedHat.

There's an awfully big price difference for old EDO 72 pin memory on e-bay or pricewatch versus Best Buy or COMPUSA.
 
I'm surprised you can find memory at all for those old computers. Even if you put more memory in it, it still isn't going to be very practical to use for stuff like web surfing, etc. Anytime you run a GUI, that requires a lot of resources. I put 6.2 on a 486 with 42M of RAM and it was extremely slow. 7.2 will be practically unusable. 486's really are just too old to support any OS with a GUI, except for maybe 95 and NT 4, but you would still need more memory. If you want to familiarize yourself with linux, you need some decent hardware, something in the PII ~350Mhz range with 128M of RAM. You can always also dual-boot your main computer. If you want to use the 486 for other things like a router/firewall or a file server, I can make some suggestions if you're interested.
 
The computer I will be using has a Cyrix 166 chip. I just tried the boot disc on the 486 because I was afraid to try my main computer. Can it run on a new system without a chance of hosing up Millenium?

The 72 pin EDO memory is just a few years old - it looks like the retail stores also kept the prices from a few years ago. Why ebay is so cheap I can't explain. Must be used or retrofitted with modern chips.

I thought the ability to work on less powerful hardware was supposed to be a feature of Linux. Maybe Redhat is not the best distribution for that. Somehow the Windows 3.1 GUI managed to work pretty well on the weaker hardware. Anyway, if it's too slow, I'll give up the idea.

If I get a cable modem, would it have a possible use as firewall/router for that? But wouldn't that slow down my good computer? I was thinking about home networking but gave up the idea since the 486 probably can't do much.
 
The operating system itself can run on much less hardware, but when you start using a GUI you're gonna need more hardware. The 166 would run the OS okay, but the GUI would just be slow. I had 7.2 on a PII 400 with 64M of RAM, and the GUI was slow even on it. I just don't think it would be practical to try and put RedHat on that old a computer. There are OS's and even GUI's that will run decently, but RedHat isn't really one of them.

You can put it on your main computer, but depending on how your hard drive is setup, you may need to reformat. You would need to repartition the drive so that Windows and linux each have a partition. Check out this article from linuxnewbie.org if you haven't done anything like this before. There are basically two methods: 1)resize the existing partition to make room for a new one 2)start from scratch and redo the whole hard drive with more than one partition. The second method will destroy all your data; the first if it works won't, but still backup stuff you need. To do #1 you'll need a program like Partition Magic. This probably sounds like a lot of trouble, but the first time is always the hardest - its gotten to be almost routine for me.

The 166 would be ideal as a firewall/router for a cable connection and it won't slow down any other computers. I have a 486 doing that for my cable connection and the 3 computers behind it and it works great.
 
Heisenberg, thanks for your help so far. I got a little further. I found out I have 32MB (must have read the spec for the chip instead of the SIMM) of memory, so I can at least get started. I verified that the CDROM drive works from Windows. But the Red Hat installation fails saying: "I could not find a Red Hat Linux CDROM in any of your CDROM drives. Now what? I think it is a US Drive 482D. The newer version of that drive says it is Linux compatible. Doing a DOS command "type enigma~1.iso" gives a screen with gibberish but some recognizable ASCII, so I know it's readable.

 
You're booting off the floppy, right? Make sure you can read the CD in Windows. It would help if you would list the specs for the system.
 
It's a Gigabyte GA-586HX motherboard with Cyrix 166+ CPU and 32 MB memory
6 GB Quantam Bigfoot hard drive on IDE 1 Master
482D CDROM on IDE 1 Slave
Diamond Stealth 3d Video card

I am booting from floppy, then selecting Load from CDROM in the loading program menu. The CD is readable in Windows, but not bootable on a known good computer. Maybe I should try a cheap disc from somewhere like cheapbytes.com? Is there a more suitable Linux than Redhat for old, weak computers?

I might try to burn another one, it seems like the data is on the CD but there is some detail that makes it unusable. It is the same data in the disc file and the CDROM. I have never had very good luck burning CDs. I looked under CD information in Easy CD Creator 4 and it says 2 sessions, 1 track with 646.90 MB at address 000000, Mode Mode2mix, and 1 track with 0 MB.
 


<< It's a Gigabyte GA-586HX motherboard with Cyrix 166+ CPU and 32 MB memory
6 GB Quantam Bigfoot hard drive on IDE 1 Master
482D CDROM on IDE 1 Slave
Diamond Stealth 3d Video card

I am booting from floppy, then selecting Load from CDROM in the loading program menu. The CD is readable in Windows, but not bootable on a known good computer. Maybe I should try a cheap disc from somewhere like cheapbytes.com? Is there a more suitable Linux than Redhat for old, weak computers?

I might try to burn another one, it seems like the data is on the CD but there is some detail that makes it unusable. It is the same data in the disc file and the CDROM. I have never had very good luck burning CDs. I looked under CD information in Easy CD Creator 4 and it says 2 sessions, 1 track with 646.90 MB at address 000000, Mode Mode2mix, and 1 track with 0 MB. >>




You should try Nero it's a lot easier and straight foward. Just click on Burn Image instead of Audio, Data or Mix and then procced from there and select the ISO and burn it.
 
I think your CD is messed up. I did the "CD information" on my 7.2 disc 1 and it only shows one data track. When you open the CD in Windows, you see files and directories, right? Not an *.iso file.
 
It sounds like he burned the .ISO file to CDR in a new filesystem (compilation in Adaptec terms).

Burning ISOs is easy, but the exact steps depends on the software you use. Post the software, and we can provide exact instructions.

I'd recommend Red Hat 6.2 for this old box. People have run X-Windows on weaker systems, so I'd try it out before giving up on the box.
 


<< It sounds like he burned the .ISO file to CDR in a new filesystem (compilation in Adaptec terms).

Burning ISOs is easy, but the exact steps depends on the software you use. Post the software, and we can provide exact instructions.

I'd recommend Red Hat 6.2 for this old box. People have run X-Windows on weaker systems, so I'd try it out before giving up on the box. >>



I think 6.2 will run fine on that computer also. I was going to suggest that but you beat me to it. 😉

Ralph - when you burn the CD, make sure to go to File>Record CD from Image in EasyCD Creator. Then just select the *.iso file.
 
I found this also, so one of these methods should work. http://www.linuxgazette.com/issue68/tag/11.html. I like the first Adaptec method given there:

"[Chris Olsen] EZ-CD Creator will handle iso's really easily, just install it, and you can right click the .iso image and select record to cd. Presto, a proper image, not one big file on CD. "

But what does he mean by "just install it"?

I do have one big file with a .iso extension, so that sure sounds like the problem. I'll let you know if it works tonight.
 
I think he means install EasyCD. You should be able to right-click on the iso file itself, and then just select "record to cd".
 
Success!!

Thank you Heisenberg, manly, and NorthernLove. I guess I have a lot to learn about CD burning. Maybe with a little more practice I'll get my ratio of coasters/good discs down below about 3:1.

The Redhat installation process did a great job on my new Dell, but I stopped well before writing anything to disc. Tomorrow I'll see how it goes on the old hardware. BTW, that linuxgazette.com is the best site for Linux newbies I've come across so far. No glitzy graphics and ads, just lots and lots of good content.

Right now I'm going to go look for something I read about called something like Process Control for Windows at zdnet. I'm tired of always having to manually strip programs out of WinME with cntrl-alt-delete. I did this before burning just to be safe.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

TRENDING THREADS

Back
Top