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Thread ID: 39256 2003-10-31 21:11:00 Bloody Linux! yorick (4256) Press F1
Post ID Timestamp Content User
188255 2003-10-31 21:11:00 See, this is what happens when you decide to be cautious .

Installed Mandrake 9 . 0 on my old AMD 350 just to see what it would be like before installing on my No . 1 Machine and got hooked .

So this is the deal!

The machine is TLS Box . MB is a Gigabyte GA 7DXR dual Bios with AMD 1700+ chip,

512 RAM

Nvidia TNT2 64 Vid card

ASUS CRW 2410A CD drive

Initial boot goes fine either from floppy or CD then I get the following msg:


Error in Exec of Stage2 :(
Trying to execute '/usr/bin/runinstall2 from the installation volume
The following fatal error occurred:

FATAL ERROR IN STAGE1:
Not a Directory

I can't recover from this
You may reboot your system .

Very nice of it to allow me to do that I thought . ;)

Anyway medium seems to be OK, as I said I installed it successfully on another box using the same discs .

I changed the CD rom and I also tried with a different non partitioned Hard Drive and still no luck .

A mate Burned a copy of 9 . 1 for me, same result .

Have tried at boot: linux ide=nodma
and Text ide=nodma

Any help greatly appreciated .

Yo
yorick (4256)
188256 2003-10-31 22:29:00 You need to put a device number when using the ide argument.

you used ide=nodma, try either ide0=nodma or ide1=nodma depending on which channel your cdrom is on.
b1naryb0y (3)
188257 2003-11-01 00:03:00 Still no luck unfortunately same result. :(

Thanks all the same.

Yo
yorick (4256)
188258 2003-11-01 00:39:00 I belive that there are compatibility problems with some AMD processors. Is that processor noted in any of the documents on the first installation CD You know, those things that people spent a lot of time and effort writing so the users can escape various nasty problems. Which the users then ignore. :_|

I know the files like that on a certain major manufacturers's disks are rubbish. but the Linux README, HOWTO, INSTALL, etc, files are worth reading. ;-)
Graham L (2)
188259 2003-11-01 01:55:00 ReadMEs!! That are supposed to be read?

Good grief here I am trying to deal with the culture shock of an entirely new OS and NOW an entire ingrained mental process has to be discarded! Whew if I knew it was going to go this far I would have stuck with DOS 6 . ;)

However, seriously . . . Nope no mention of this AMD chip but then it seems to function all right until it gets to the "Copying installation files" window .

I was considering using windows to copy the files to an HD then using an hd . img boot floppy to get it to boot from the HD but that would mean the HD would have a fat32 FS . Is that an option or would I have to convert the HD to a Unix FS of some description first
yorick (4256)
188260 2003-11-01 02:19:00 :D

I knew I had seen reports of problems with AMDs, and I've just been reminding myself with google . It seems the 350 K6-2 wouldn't work with W95 OSR2 without a patch which MS produced, and in Linux some of them would give odd errors if they had more than 32MB of memory . :D

Some of the very fast ones work slowly in some cache operations . . . but your problem seems to be a "reading a CD" one .

There's no problem with the Linux installer reading an MS formatted hard disk (except NTFS) . What might work in a nicer way than copying the CDs would be to use an FTP installation . B-) If you've still got the AMD350 running, you should be able to run a crossover cable to the new one, and do it that way .
Graham L (2)
188261 2003-11-03 07:58:00 OK I put the install fles on an HD and "achieved" the same result .
This is the resulting log:

*welcome to the Mandrake Linux install (mdk-stage1, version 9 . 0 built Sep 22 2002 02:37:00)
*opening /proc/cmdline . . .
* initrd=hd . rdz ramdisk_size=32000 root=/dev/ram3 automatic=method:disk vga=788 BOOT_IMAGE=vml inuz auto
*AUTOMATIC MODE: got 1 params
* got 7 args
*spawning a shell
*cannot open shell - /tmp/sh doesn't exist
*loading modules dependencies
*AUTOMATIC: parameter disk for method means returning Hard disk
*have to insmod sd_mod
*needs scsi_mod
*needs sd_mod
* succeeded sd_mod
*looking for ide media
*IDE/1: hda is a QUANTUM bigfoot TX4 . 0AT
*IDE/2: hdc is a IDE/ATAPI CD-ROM 52XS
*looking for scsi media
*looking for Compaq Smart Array media
*looking DAC960
*guessing type of /dev/hda5
*mounting /dev/hda5 on /tmp/hdimage as type ext2
*mount failed: invalid argument
*mounting /dev/hda5 on /tmp/hdimage as type vfat
*have to nsmod vfat
*needs fat
*needs vfat
* succeeded vfat
*total memory 512 Mbytes
*trying to load /tmp/image/Mandrake/base/mdkinst_stage2 . bz2 as a ramdisk
*mounting /dev/ram3 on/tmp/stage2 as type ext2
*stage1: disconnecting life support systems


The log for the CD install looks pretty much the same, save for a few minor differences such as:

*found Linux install CD, good news!

Does this point to anything significant .

I ran up the CD install on another machine and got exactly the same logs right down to the "disconnecting Life support" . The only difference is that it kept going with the install without any problems .
yorick (4256)
188262 2003-11-03 10:42:00 Howdy Yorick,

You mentioned that you succeeded in installing Mandrake on a different computer. Perhaps the CD drive needs to be relocated onto a different ide. This has sometimes worked for me :)

The other way (and perhaps easier :D ) would be to install linux on the other computer and then do a network install via nfs. You did mention that you had a spare hard drive :)
Gorela (901)
188263 2003-11-03 18:28:00 Lots of people can tell you all about this!

(if the drivers for the network come on the floopy.)
ilikelinux (1418)
188264 2003-11-03 18:29:00 have you tried 9.1 or 9.2? ilikelinux (1418)
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