Joho the Blog
|
|
|
July 02, 2003
It started off well. I dragged an old computer up from the basement, put in a brand new hard drive, and started to install RedHat 9 fresh out of the box. Actually, it wasn't quite that simple. The BIOS is from 1999 and it doesn't know how to boot from a CD. But the Norton Ghost floppy I'd made boots into PC DOS which then recognizes the CD, and we were off and running. But RedHat reported that the second CD was corrupt, which I find unlikely since it's fresh out of the sleeve and has no obvious scratches. But, well, what the heck. I'll just reboot and start again. Heck, it's just like installing Windows after all! But Linux has killed my hard drive. My system tries to boot from it but hangs. The BIOS is old enough that I can't force it to boot from the floppy. [Note: Ok, so I just found where in the BIOS it lets me boot from the CD. I'm not as screwed as I'd thought.] I was so excited as the first CD was chugging away. Now I'm a bitter, cynical old man who is forever going to chase children off his lawn. LATER: Booting from the CD. Let's see how well RedHat recovers from its maybe bogus problem with the second CD. I'm excited again. LATER: Before the first disk finished its re-install from scratch, my system went back to terminal (non-graphical) mode and told me that install has terminated abnormally, right after X server started succfessfully. It's unmounted a bunch of filesystems and is telling me I may safely reboot my system. So, I don't know if it's broken or not... It's not booting from the hard disk. I'll move on to attempt #3. I just ran linux rescue. It seemed to work, or at least it didn't complain. But I can't see that it did me any good. I'm rebooting and starting to reinstall. This time I've told RedHat that it's an upgrade, not a reinstall. It's at least asking me about boot loaders. Maybe this time the hard drive will learn how to boot itself rather than going into the terminal twitches. Hmm, now it tells me that "No kernel packages were installed on your system. Your boot loader configuration will not be changed." Ooh! Ooh! It's asking me if I want to make a boot diskette! The massive oak door of Linux is about to swing open. I'm about to be given the key! It's also further than I've gotten so far in this multi-try installation. In fact, RedHat is announcing that the installation is complete. I must be missing a heck of a lot of packages, though, since I only made it through Disk 1. Damn. It's still not booting from the hard drive. And with the bios set to boot from the CD first, the system is hanging if the CD is empty. I'll switch the boot order and try booting from my spiffy new Linux floppy. Booted from the floppy. It's now noticing (for the first time?) my mouse and USB ports. Progress, I assume. Damn, now it's asking for localhost login, but I never gave it a user name or pwd and I don't know what the defaults are. Googling it on my Windows machines takes me to redhat.com where it almost explains it: If I didn't create a user account during the installation (which I didn't because installation terminated abnormally), I can log in as root and use the pwd I created for the system. Ok, but it's not real clear how to log in as root. So, I'll do the obvious thing and type "root." And it works. It doesn't even ask me for a pwd. But, now what? I'm at a command prompt and about all I remember from Unix is that "ls" lists files and "rm *.*" probably isn't a good idea, and it would be an even worse idea if I remembered the parameter that makes it recursive. My nephew, Greg LinuxMan Cavanagh, who administers Linux clusters for a place where you need special clearance, suggests that I try telling the bios that my disk is smaller than it is since Linux just needs to install a loader and will figure out the actual size once it loads, which is pretty cool. But, unfortunately, changing the disk size has no effect. Onto my 4th attempt to install it. This time I'm telling it to switch from the GRUB boot loader, hoping that this will force it to load a frigging boot loader. Also, I'm telling it I want to configure which packages should be installed, again hoping that this will force the RedHat installer out of its complacency. I've just told it to install all 4.5 gig of packages, figuring that if I pick and choose, I am guaranteed to fail to pick the ones I need. It's chugging along. I'll try to stay up long enough to see if it rejects the second CD again, but it's getting late and I have to get up early tomorrow... Disk 2 is in and this time it's working. (So far.) I think I'll head off to bed. One more quick check...and it seems to have frozen while installed "evolution." I'm not going to blame Linux for this. Could be a hardware problem. Nope, still not booting from the hard drive. Good night. Posted
by D. Weinberger at July 2, 2003 11:08 PM
TrackBackListed below are links to weblogs that reference Linux ate my hard drive?:
» David Weinberger puts me off Linux from Dangerous thinking Tracked on July 6, 2003 07:23 AM
» David Weinberger puts me off Linux from Dangerous thinking Tracked on July 6, 2003 07:27 AM |
Comments
You know, maybe you should start a "Computer Follies" category...
Posted by: Frankenstein | July 2, 2003 11:40 PM
I did. I call it "tech."
Posted by: dweinberger | July 3, 2003 12:26 AM
stop torturing yourself and those poor computers.
Get a mac. I'll give you 15% off.
You know you're in denial.
Posted by: Kevin Marks | July 3, 2003 06:15 AM
Where are you getting your hardware, David? There's a pattern here. Simple fact: some manufacturers are crap - that simple.
Posted by: Anonymous | July 3, 2003 06:18 AM
Some manufacturers may be crap, but that's supposed to be beside the point with Linux. The Linux advocates are always saying how one of the great things about Linux is that you can install it on whatever old iron you've got hanging around that's not strong enough to run Redmond's latest and greatest. But as David's experience shows, it ain't necessarily so. UNIX® is still UNIX.
I'm not going to tell you to get a Mac, David. You've got too much invested in Wintel to switch, just like I've got too much invested in my Macs to switch. But you might want to consider getting one to play with, just for fun....
Posted by: ralph | July 3, 2003 08:16 AM
This is old hardware from a previous computer I built and then stripped for parts. The CD drive seems flaky. I have a new one I'll put in. But the sort of problems I'm having don't really smack of hw, despite my suspicions (except for the occasional CD read errors). I'm not crashing. The big issue is that it doesn't want to boot from the HD, although it's certainly not giving me any error msgs about the HD itself.
Anyone care to tell me how to tell which physical drives are mounted? I can do a "mount" after booting from the floppy, but I can't tell what I'm looking at.
As for a Mac: I'm doing the linux to learn and have fun in my own perverted way. A Mac laptop is in my future, I believe.
Posted by: dweinberger | July 3, 2003 09:11 AM
Since the price of a computer has dropped to $1500. It doesn't take much debugging time to eat through $300.
In the last 4 months, I've installed Linux RedHat 7.2, 8.0 & 9.0 from downloaded RedHat Each time, I first tested the install on my most recent acquisition - a $450 eMachine (including monitor and printer), and the installs were no problem. Then, because it's what the customer wanted, I struggled through installing them on the machines that the customer had "hanging around". Since the hardware had "little" problems - bad CD-ROM, bad floppy disk, etc., they paid much more than just getting a couple of new machines. And that was just in the install; they'll continue to pay in occasional problems going forward.
David, it sounds to me like you have some type of hardware problem - most likely in the drive controller since both your CD and HD have indicated some problems, though it could be in RAM or some other arcane place.
Any manufacturer can churn out a bad system; after 20 years in PCs (I still have my first AppleII GS), I've seen them all send me a bad one or six - Mac, Compaq, Dell, HP, IBM - it doesn't matter.
My recommendation is to just get a new cheap machine and stop hurting your head. We need your brain to focus on thoughts like Generation Alpha and the likelihood of us being simulations of ourselves, not on bad drive controllers.
Posted by: Jeff Chamberlain | July 3, 2003 10:52 AM
I enthusiastically read through the whole scenario above. I could have written the same thing. I'm installing Fedora on a new computer and, step-by-step, followed the same procedures you did before finding this thread.
I've installed fedora on an identical machine without any hitches. Since my attempt, I've installed XP with Virtual PC 2004. In VPC I have '98 installed. No hitches. I'm starting over from scratch because I have the ten hours to spend trying - not really. Now it's a challenge and if I have to hold a gun to this boxes cpu - it's going to run Linux.
Posted by: We are in the same boat | March 25, 2004 12:27 AM
Ditto.. I have the exact same problem installing Fedora on 3 machines... What's the deal here!
The OS is defintely in there, but when the machine boots it's not finding the dman OS. I too get the error: " no kernel packages were installed on your system. Your boot loader configuration will not be changed"
When I boot I get this error: error loading OS
HEEEEElp! Oh. yeas... I have over ten hours into this also.. Now i see why linux people are such geeks.. you become one after you finally spend the five weeks it takes to figure eveything out... and don't forget kiddies... we haven't even gotten to the operating system yet.. how bout that learning curve..
Dave
Posted by: David C | May 12, 2004 06:08 PM
YES! DAMN! I have the same prob, in the middle of a google search right now to see how to fix it.
I installed fedora and got "Your boot loader configuration will not be changed"
hmmmm, seems alot of people with redhat or fedora have this prob, maybe I should switch to another distrib...
but I have 20 hours in here too... (haha, I'm slower than you guys!)
Posted by: Adam | June 6, 2004 09:03 PM
hm...
2 things
ok
i had a similar problem, im using phoenix bios
when u boot, wither its from hda(with no numerals after it) or from hda1 etc. in my bios, its written as harddrive 0, harddrive 1, etc. i figured out that harddrive 0 is the MBR, which is also hda. when u install linux, u must install the linux system to harddrive 1, aka hda1. when u set ur harddrive to boot, u must make it boot from harddrive 0, whereas u set ur bootloader install in the MBR.
another option.
when installing linux, when it asks for the bootloader, make it so that the bootloader is installed in the 1st sector of the home directory. then, type cfdisk in ur terminal after booting from ur floppy that u made. its a harddisk partitioner. set ur linux partition flag as bootable. then, when ur harddrive fires up, itll boot from the bootloader u set onto the 1st sector.
Posted by: someone helpful | July 11, 2004 07:23 PM