Why does linux install freeze on my system?

[sygyzy]

I tried RedHat 8.0 and Mandrake 9.0. RedHat will always fail when formatting. Says ext2 failure on hda1, hda6 (insert random one here).

Mandrake always gets past partitioning and formatting and will freeze after 10-20% of the packages have been installed.

I thought it might be because my HD is on Cable Select, so I switched it to master.

ASUS CUSL2
Celeron 900
Toshiba 16X DVD ROM, IDE.
All Bios defaults
4x Yamaha SCSI Burner with an Adaptec 2910 ( i think) scsi PCI card. I took out the card and unplugged the burner just in case - made no difference.

I ran Maxtor's low level utils and did a meticulous check of the hard drive. Nothing wrong at all. I took the HD out of my main system where it housed mp3's and was accessed every single day in Windows OS's without a single problem.

What gives?

 

[drag]

I donno... Did you make all new partitions? Hda1,hda6 (insert... ) what you mean that you'd get random hda* numbers?

If this is a clean install.... get to the command line and run this (note this command will erase any a all info store d on a hd:

dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hda

/dev/zero is a special file that pretends to have a infinate number of zeros... So this command (dd is used for making images, or exact duplicates of physical storage mediums into a file and visa versa if = input file of = output file) So you'll be filling up your entire HD with zeros... This sometimes is a nice test and after a hour or so or filling up your HD with zeros, you have a "clean" HD to install from... better than formatting. ALmost the same as low level formatting, just with out the whole potential of destroying your HD... Good for making sure you have information completely written over if you have to store sensitive info on a HD...

Do that and try to begin the install, otherwise I am thinking that you may have to specify which type of logical layout (you know the workaround to get the x86 archatecture to read HDs over 2 gig or whatever) of your HD in the bios... like LDA (LBA ?) vs whatever else... I forget that part, just try going to the BIOS and making sure that your HD is detected and configuration is saved....

Hope that works

 

[Spyro]

I have a rather ancient pentium II 333mhz that could run (and install) linux just fine, so I don't think that there is anythng wrong with bios. There shouldn't be anything wrong with using cable select either. Since both installs freeze when dealing with the hard drive, I think you should do what drag said and then see id you get any results. Besides that I can't really figure out whats up because all of your hardware is compatible.

 

[civad]

DId you download the iso images? did you do a md5sum?

 

[sygyzy]

I did download mandrake. I have been trying redhat which is a legal retail copy. We checked the media too. No luck.

 

[civad]

Are you trying to do the 'standard' or 'default' install, which means that the installer does the partitioning on its own (both for Mandrake and RH)?

If yes, try using Mandrake's custom disk partitioning. It has an easy to use GUI tool. Delete all partitions on the drive. Then create atleast two partitions. The first would be the ' / ' . Use the ext3 filesystem for this one. The second would be the '/home' partition. Use ext3 for this also. Search for "Mandrake Installation' on Google Images. See the third picture (the linux-user.de...site)

Hopefully your installer should work okay now. One more thing: did the HDD have NTFS partition before you formatted it?

 

[sygyzy]

I did not make new partitions manually. I have the installers wipe out all partitions and data on my drives and create their own partitions. What I meant by random hda* numbers is sometimes I would choose to have just / and /home and sometimes / and /home and /usr etc. And swap of course. Depending on which you choose, there are different hda created.

Today I ran Redhat installer at least a dozen times and Mandrake 2-3 times. Mandrake actually got past the formatting today but froze during copying the files.

In Redhat, before it starts copying files, I went to the terminal and turned off dma and apm. I even reset bios to defaults and diabled powered management there.

I have tried both recommended and expert installs. I also tried ext2 since I read that (along with the other problems) this might cause it to hang.

Did my HD have NTFS before formatting? No, the very first file system was fat32 and since then all formats were linux.

 

[civad]

<<Today I ran Redhat installer at least a dozen times and Mandrake 2-3 times.>>

Wow!

I sometimes used to get errors during install of Libranet (Debian-based) when I used to choose ext3 filesystem. The default reiserfs used to work for some reason.
And this happened on a hdd that earlier had Win 2k on NTFS. Hence the question about NTFS. Just took a chance

Btw: did the manual partitioning work? Im curious to know...

 

[sygyzy]

Yeah, now it seems that partitioning and formatting almost always work. I even tried doing text install. It's the copying that freezes most of the time.

 

[Spyro]

, OK this is just plain wierd.

Is there anything about your system that isn't normal or something? I don't see why this won't work on your computer. There is only one thing that I can think of doing.

OK after the installer starts copying files anf if the mandrake or red hat installers support this you can try punching alt while going through f1 through f9 until you find the terminal that displays the messages while the system installs. When you reach the one that displays all of the extra installing information stay there and keep an eye on it for any possible error messages. Let us know how it goes and good luck .

If all else fails you can try to install a more distro of linu just to test. I recommend downloading one of the debian net install cds and trying to install it (if you use DSL/Cable LordSutch's is the easiest). If you get some kinf of error message post it here and we should be able to figure out what went wrong. You can also switch between virtual terminals, by using the function keys, in debian, and since debians installer is very "vocal" it should display some kind of error message.

(AntiFlame Disclaimer): I'm not advocating that you switch to debian though, I'm simply suggesting that you try to install a different distro and see if you get any error messages. (However if you do want to continue with debian use the bf2.4 option when the installer starts up, this will give you a more usable kernel for your distro.)

 

[sygyzy]

There is nothing weird about my system except I have a neon light hooked up to a switch and one of the molex power connectors. I never turn it on when installing though.

BTW, I got bored so I installed Win2k SP3 and BeOS. Both worked without a single glitch. I even installed apps and ran Windows Update.

 

[Spyro]

Hmmm, a neon light.....

Well anyway, I suppose, happy windows washing.....

Disclaimer: Must... get....... sleepp..... zzzzzzzzzzz

 

[lowtech1]

Have you tried install with another known good cdrom device?

 

[sygyzy]

No, but I have no reason to believe that the media or drive is bad. The drive is a 16x DVD rom that hasn't been used in years. When I ran a media check, it was fine. And each time it freezes, the HD light is on but not the dvd rom light.

 

[drag]

Maybe if the dvd has been sitting around for a while it could be a little outa wack. Maybe it got knocked around a bit? those things can be very sensitive to specific bumps . kinda like a your elbow...

Or maybe it's lense is got a couple dust motes sitting in it... IF it was in a badly designed or cheap computer case, it can create a vacuum right behind the cdrom and dust will gather in the cdroms and floppies, maybe it worked fine and after moving around it jared some of the dust loose into the insides... maybe take it apart a bit and blow any dust out of it... Just wild speculation...

Oh this is another thing I like to point out... It's not a good idea to wrap your ide cables into tubing. I know it works most of the time, but it may cause odd problems that may look like a drive is going out, were it works normally 99% percent of the time and only crap out when the wires are at full load... Those IDE cables have apsolutly no electronic sheilding whatso ever, they depend on the fact that on each side of any wire there is a wire with aposing currect, this prevents the wire from building weird magnetic feilds from forming... you know like how coils work... This can distrupt the high speed transfer of information. know if ribbons smooshed together in those tubes have a bunch of wires that are running the same polarity are crossing and touching an running next to each other can cause problems. You know those cables are essentailly 15 year old technology.

 

[drag]

Maybe this can help.. combatting IDE corruption

 

[Spyro]

In addition to what drag has suggested, have you tried installing red hat with an alternate set of hardware yet? Just pull an old drive out of a working computer and see if you can get red hat to install on it, if it doesn't work then the problem was with the hard drive if it still doesn't work then check on the DVD drive in a similar fashion. Try installing using a regular CD-Rom drive just to see what happens.

 

[drag]

also when using the newer 80 wire ide cables, you need to make sure that they are all connected together correctly It is very important that you have the proper side into the motherboard and if you can make sure that the cdrom and the HD you are writing to is on seperate cables....

ie:
Blue: The blue connector attaches to the host (motherboard or controller).
Gray: The gray connector is in the middle of the cable, and goes to any slave (device 1) drive if present on the channel.
Black: The black connector is at the opposite end from the host connector and goes to the master drive (device 0), or a single drive if only one is used.

also if you are using a older 40wire cable that the IDE speed is set low

 

[sygyzy]

I am not using rounded cables.

The drive is automatically set at ATA66 in BIOS. I assume it's because it's an old/slow drive.

It is possible the DVD is defective, but again, all the freeze/stalls happen while writing to the HD. In my experience, if it's a media problem, the drive (CD) light gets stuck and the disc keeps spinning. In this case the HD always is stuck (light is on).

I have not tried installing with an alternative set of hardware, but I will try when I have time or can find drives to swap.

The cables are connected properly. What I find interesting is that other OS's don't have a single problem with install or operation.

Thanks for the ideas, any more? Keep them flowing!

 

[LatexRat]

I had the exact same problem, and it turned out to be the hard drive .. I couldnt install windows XP, or most flavors of Linux. Try out a new error free hard drive could pickup a cheap on in the For Sale/Trade forums if you don't already have one around

 

[sygyzy]

But I *can* install Windows (2000). I will try everyone's suggestion and find an old hard drive.

 

[civad]

I will try everyone's suggestion and find an old hard drive.

I think you might still be able to use the *bad* hdd for storing data, etc....

 

[drag]

that is so damn queer... did you try doing the zero write command? And on that link I gave you it described how to copy a large file and run diff against it to check for any data corruption...

Maybe it's a combination of the cd and cdrom drive. I know that some drives have a hardtime reading burned disks correctly. I don't know why this happens, but you can have a copied cd that will work on a hundred different drives with no problem, but will screw up on a paticular drive.... Thats a long shot though.

It could some weird bug somewhere not even related to the harddrive, like a conflict in RAM...
I don't know... try using a install with a older/different kernel version and see if that helps, like debian-stable. Maybe its a bug in the modules that RedHat and Mandrake use.. They are very closely related versions of linux.

 

[sygyzy]

If it was the actual burned cd, it would mean only Mandrake should have failed. I have a retail, store bought, in the box, copy of Red Hat 8. The Mandrake 8 was burned at 24x on TDK media rated for 48x. I am starting to believe that there really is something wrong with my HD, but only with Linux. BeOS and Win2k work with it just fine.

It's kind of unfortunate that I basically lose out on a 27 GB hard drive. Now I am a bit paranoid even using it for just data. I'll take my coworker's 10GB at work and try it. I hope that'll be the fix since I really never had a dvd drive die on me and that would just suck!

Thanks for all your help so far, keep ideas coming, even if they are just brain dumps I appreciate everything.

 

[sygyzy]

How can I run the write 0 command? The only way for me to get a prompt where I can run commands is by starting the install. Can I get better instructions from someone (either using the Mandrake or Redhat cd'sd for bootup).

I have tried Lindows and that too freezes. MS works fine, as I mentioned before.