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So tired of linux

F

foges

Senior member
Im so tired of trying to get linux to work on my machine that ive given up. first i tried ubuntu, but it only started to busybox, nothing else, changed my cd drive type to AHCI, that would let me install, but would not even boot to GRUB.

Then tried openSUSE, it started the live CD without changing my Drive to AHCI, then when installing it would first not install on my dual partitioned drive, said it had problems installing GRUB, so yay, no boot manager. Then tried installing it on another empty HD without and set it to be the primary drive in the bios. Gave me a couple errors during install (chroot, and others) and when rebooting after install, it takes ages and guess what, it boots up to Busybox 🙁

Am i doing something very clearly wrong? (ps, all my drives are SATA)

System:
Q9550 - 2.83 GHz
P5Q-E
4 GB Corsairs RAM
ATI EAH 3450 - 512MB
640GB WD + 200GB WD
550VX Corsairs PSU
 
I'd suggest updating your BIOS to the latest stable / well reputed version,
clearing your BIOS/CMOS/NVRAM on the motherboard properly,
then going in and reviewing/setting your BIOS settings properly one by one.

In general if your first/primary hard disk is selected to be "first" and "bootable" then usually you don't get OS level install / boot problems. I've seen such problems with XP, Vista, and various kinds of LINUX/UNIX, and usually it is related to a discrepancy between the BIOS hard disk ordering / settings and the way the drives are physically arranged and the way the OS's own drivers see the drive ordering. Occasionally the OS is clearly doing something stupid, but often it is the PC BIOS and its settings that are at fault.

Perhaps plugging the hard drives in to physically different ports / master & slave orders or whatever can help. Sometimes motherboards have two or three physically different drive controllers for PATA, SATA drives on board. Some of these may not be as compatible / correct in their BIOS and in the OS driver support as others. Sometimes you can even have a drive jumpered as "master with no slaves present" and yet have a slave drive attached to the same bus and things really get confused, and of course other variations on such problems can be just as bad.

UBUNTU / SUSE / FEDORA / ... can have their bugs and quirks but usually if more than two such modern distributions fail to even basically install / boot on your hardware, you should take a look at your hardware / BIOS / system settings to see if something is amiss.

Sometimes it is easiest to physically unplug any unnecessary drive from your system while you're doing an OS install so that there is no possibility for confusion of what drive / boot sector to use. Then you can let the BIOS boot selector handle selection of what OS / drive to boot once you successfully have finished the OS install, confirmed it working, and reconnected the other drive.



 
You are a perfect candidate to run Ubuntu( or any flavor) as a virtual machine. I am using

SunxVM VirtualBox to run Ubuntu 8.04.1 and it works like a charm. Best of all everything is free.
 
foges, your DVD-drive is connected to SATA-port? If so, that might cause problems if you have AHCI enabled. Your motherboard more than likely has two SATA-controllers, one Intel ICH controller and one other whichever motherboard manufacturer decided to bundle. I suggest you plug your hard drives to the Intel controller and DVD-drives to the other controller. Then you should be able to leave AHCI enabled for your hard drives while using legacy PATA-mode for your DVD-drives.
 
Thanks guys. yeah QuixoticOne, i would also find it strange that the problem was purely with opensuse and ubuntu.
I think ill give sunxVM a shot, it will give me a less steep learning curve, sounds good.

@keeper: my HD is connected to a SATA port. I have however tried using an IDE drive and it didnt fix the problem (i could get into the ubuntu live CD part, but installation failed). I dont have AHCI enabled, and i cant use the second set of sata ports because my mobo manual says they are for HD's purely and i cant connect my HD's to there because i have 3 HD's and only 2 ports
 
arg, ive got sun xVM working, but the resolution wont go any higher than 800x600, tried editing xorg, but didnt help 🙁
 
wonderful, thanks. How would i go about mounting the other HD's i have in my computer (if its even possible)
 
Once the guest additions have been installed you need to add the folders you want to share from the Vbox options, once that is done you can mount the drives in ubuntu, many of these questions are covered in the vbox forums:

Link
 
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