Problem installing red hat linux

[Wadded Beef]

While attempting to venture into the world outside of windows, I have hit a snag...when I try to install linux it brings me to either...

A blue screen that says "Welcome To Red Hat Linux" and at the bottom are some buttons listed with their functions (i.e. |F12 Next Screen|) and it sits there frozen for eternity with the cd drive spinning up now and then.

Or...

A black screen that says this:

install exited abnormally:-( -- received signal 11
sending termination signals ... done
sending kill signals ... done
unmounting filesystems
/proc
/tmp/image
you may safely reboot your system

Any ideas how to get past this and install linux? thanx!!! =]

 

[Wadded Beef]

ooh something new!!

but its another error message =[

this one says "error 2 reading header: cpio : bad magic" 3 times in a row. then it freezes. bad magic? lol wth is that?

 

[n0cmonkey]

Drop RedHat and install Fedora (unless you have RedHat enterprise Linux or whatever they call it- and if you do call support ). Check the ram too.

EDIT: Oh yeah, maybe a download issue, check the md5 (if you stick with RH).

 

[phisrow]

I'm not a serious expert on this sort of thing; but all the error 11s I've ever run into have been flakey ram. Give memtest86 a go.

 

[Wadded Beef]

I have to go with redhat linux - it's for a class I'm taking and its the publishers edition, whatever that means...does that means it suxors? lol

 

[Wadded Beef]

i have 3 sticks of kingston hyperx pc3000 in there...would it be able to tell me which one(s) is/are bad? I ran regular memtest and it was error free after an hour... whats the difference between memtest and memtest86? also I tried installing it on my mom's computer (decent computer as well...homebuilt a64 sff) and it freezes at that same blue screen that says "Welcome To Red Hat Linux" ...gah I thought linux was supposed to be less of a hassle that windows! =[

 

[Sunner]

Originally posted by: Wadded Beef
I have to go with redhat linux - it's for a class I'm taking and its the publishers edition, whatever that means...does that means it suxors? lol

What version is it?
The last version that was actually called "Redhat Linux" was 9, and even that is a few years old(2-3?) by now.
Seems stupid to have a class around an obsolete, and by now even nonexistant distro, kinda like having a Windows class with Windows98.

Anyway, it sounds like you might have a bad disc to me, since the CD-ROM behaves so strangely, sounds like it's having a problem reading the disc.

Oh and it should say what version it is during the initial boot, right on the top of the screen, where you press enter to begin the installation.

 

[Wadded Beef]

its version 8.0 LOL...stupid public school junior college... anyways yea i'm think the disc is bad or something...in that blue screen page i pressed alt+f4 just to see wut it would do, then it takes me to a bunch of error messages popping up to the rhythm of the spinning up and weird noises of the cd rom drive. the error messages say...

<4hdc> cdrom_decode_status: status=0x51 { DriveReady SeekComplete Error }
cdrom_decode_status: status=0x30
ATAPI Reset Complete
end request : I/O error dev 16:00 (hdc) sector 1182004
and these continue in an endless loop.

 

[Wadded Beef]

the error loop starts out with these two...

unable to recognize cd rom format
can't find ext2 filesystem on devloop (0,7)

unable to recognize the format? how did it boot if it couldn't read the format??

 

[drag]

Originally posted by: Wadded Beef
its version 8.0 LOL...stupid public school junior college... anyways yea i'm think the disc is bad or something...in that blue screen page i pressed alt+f4 just to see wut it would do, then it takes me to a bunch of error messages popping up to the rhythm of the spinning up and weird noises of the cd rom drive. the error messages say...

<4hdc> cdrom_decode_status: status=0x51 { DriveReady SeekComplete Error }
cdrom_decode_status: status=0x30
ATAPI Reset Complete
end request : I/O error dev 16:00 (hdc) sector 1182004
and these continue in an endless loop.

That would be a screwed up cdrom or a screwed up cdrom drive.

Head on down to http://www.linuxiso.org get a Fedora install disk from there and tell them that you couldn't find a replacement disk so you installed Fedora Core 3. Should be close enough for government work.

 

[Sunner]

Originally posted by: drag

Originally posted by: Wadded Beef
its version 8.0 LOL...stupid public school junior college... anyways yea i'm think the disc is bad or something...in that blue screen page i pressed alt+f4 just to see wut it would do, then it takes me to a bunch of error messages popping up to the rhythm of the spinning up and weird noises of the cd rom drive. the error messages say...

<4hdc> cdrom_decode_status: status=0x51 { DriveReady SeekComplete Error }
cdrom_decode_status: status=0x30
ATAPI Reset Complete
end request : I/O error dev 16:00 (hdc) sector 1182004
and these continue in an endless loop.

That would be a screwed up cdrom or a screwed up cdrom drive.

Head on down to http://www.linuxiso.org get a Fedora install disk from there and tell them that you couldn't find a replacement disk so you installed Fedora Core 3. Should be close enough for government work.

If you really need Redhat 8 it should still be available on FTP sites around the net.
In fact I had a quick look at Sunet's FTP, and it's there, ftp://ftp.sunet.se/pub/Linux/d...linux/8.0/en/iso/i386/

Good luck.

 

[n0cmonkey]

I don't know how well RedHat 8 will handle NEW hardware... Hopefully you haven't upgraded in a while...

 

[Sunner]

Originally posted by: n0cmonkey
I don't know how well RedHat 8 will handle NEW hardware... Hopefully you haven't upgraded in a while...

As long as it's pretty "plain" hardware it should be fine.
By plain I mean no wireless stuff, no nForce stuff, etc.

I'm shameful to say that we still run it on a bunch of fairly new servers where I work, mostly HPaq DL360's or DL380's, all G3's.
Works fine enough, as well as Redhat 8 will work I guess...

 

[Wadded Beef]

thanks for the link, ya i do have to use red hat 8 sadly... i have an nforce2 northbridge is that gonna be a problem? and how are ati's drivers in linux? i hear they suck kinda

 

[n0cmonkey]

Originally posted by: Wadded Beef
thanks for the link, ya i do have to use red hat 8 sadly... i have an nforce2 northbridge is that gonna be a problem? and how are ati's drivers in linux? i hear they suck kinda

The nForce will most likely cause issues. Use a different computer.

ATI's drivers suck, don't expect 3d.

 

[Sunner]

Originally posted by: Wadded Beef
thanks for the link, ya i do have to use red hat 8 sadly... i have an nforce2 northbridge is that gonna be a problem? and how are ati's drivers in linux? i hear they suck kinda

The nForce will probably work, but will also probably take quite a bit of work.
nForce hardware and Linux don't mix, for some reason nVidia refuses to hand over documentation on such simple things as NIC's.

 

[Wadded Beef]

i built an athlon 64 sff for my mom, it has a ti4400 and a via kt880 motherboard, would this be a better cantidate for redhat 8? the only hard part is explaining why i need to use her's instead of mine, heh...

 

[Sunner]

Should work fine, VIA chipsets are well supported, though I haven't personally tried anything that new, and A64's weren't exactly around when Redhat 8 showed up
Give it a try, as long as it detects your disks and NIC(s) you should be fine.
If it doesn't detect your NIC, the easiest way IMO would be to just put some cheapo PCI NIC in there.

 

[Wadded Beef]

i was able to do a "linux mediacheck" and the disc failed. yep it was the disc. I downloaded the 5 discs found here ftp://ftp.sunet.se/pub/Linux/d...linux/8.0/en/iso/i386/ and burned the 1st one and tried to boot with it, it wouldn't boot. what do i need to do to make the cd boot? Do I need to add anything to the cd or fiddle with it to make it bootable? btw i don't have a floppy drive so no floppy boots allowed =]

 

[Randabis]

What software did you use to burn the CDs?

 

[Wadded Beef]

nero express for the new ones. the old ones (which failed data verification) were given to me at school.

 

[Wadded Beef]

oops double post sry

 

[drag]

just remember when burning disks from ISO you have to go thru the dialog and burn them as ISO images. If you copy the files to the cdrom and burn them, you will end up with a cdrom with a copy of of a ISO image on it.

ISO images are basicly bit by bit copies of real cds. If you burn them correctly and the disks are specificly bootable (the first one should be) it should work fine. The disks should just be able to boot right off of the bat.


I don't know if that is what your doing, but it's happenned to plenty of other people in the past.

 

[Wadded Beef]

there's no .iso in the folder to burn I'm just copying the files onto a cd.

 

[Sunner]

The link I gave contained 5 ISO files, did you burn them through the "Burn image" dialogue?