I'm trying to install RH9 on a pc on my home network. I've done a media check from the options screen, but cdrom installation still hangs up in several places. At first I couldn't get past the RH opening screen: it would load vmlinuz and initrd.img and hang up at "ready."
Thru persistance I was able to open the options screen, and from there it was easier to boot. I often get as far as /sbin/loader, then it hangs up (if I leave it running it prints out gibberish that looks like an attempt at an error message, like "interrupt unknown").
A couple of times I got as far as "Running anaconda, the Red Hat Linux system installer, please wait..." Finally gave up waiting and shut down.
Tried installing RH8, which I have a DVD for, from the same pc, with the same results. I've tried with most of the install options: noprobe, skipddc (I'm running a single monitor off a KVM switch), lowres, text, doesn't matter.
I intend to use this pc only as a firewall, so all it has is a 8.25 GB HDD with a DOS-formatted partition. The motherboard is an Intel 633 ATX w/ Celeron CPU, and the memory checks out on boot as 327680k, or 320 MB, so all should be ok.
Tested two cdrom drives + my dvd drive, tested both IDE connections on the motherboard (separate from the HDD and then connected as a slave to the HDD). The only thing I haven't done is copy the media, which I thought was unnecessary since they passed the media check.
I have RH8 installed and running on another machine on my home network, so I'm stumped :(
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As Callandor said, check the memory.
Also, how much memory do you have installed? Even if you are just going to use this as a firewall, you still need to meet the minimum requirements for RAM.
Why are you using a full install of RH for just a firewall? There are several floppy and CD based LINUX versions that will operate from the media and will avoid hacker intrusions.
There was no PC100 RAM available locally, so I went on eBay. Would a 128 MB SDRAM PC100 upgrade for Dell Inspiron work if I tried swapping RAM to look for a difference?
The ad specifically addresses the Dell Inspiron, don't know if that SDRAM differs / if there are different PC100 standards. So let me know about that and I'll confirm my bid today.
I did ad in another 64 MB board of SDRAM I had from crucial, tho it's not marked PC100, and the BIOS recognized it. No change in performance tho.
I reset the BIOS to defaults, and got the updating ESCD and verifying DMI Pool Data ...success but then it hung up. On reboot, again, verifying DMI Pool Data, but then it hangs up whenever the CMOS is set to boot to the floppy drive and there's no boot disk in the floppy drive. You can hear it engage the drive and the floppy drive light goes on briefly, but then it hangs up or I get "missing operating system"
I had tried loading Win98 just to see what would happen - it goes into "formatting the drive" and then to "checking components" GUI and hangs up on the GUI, which looks again like I have run out of memory. Went back to fdisk, the partition info shows primary DOS status A (active?) usage 100% FAT32 system with 8056 MB available space.
I heard something about transferring system files to the boot sector of the disk to make it bootable but I'm not sure how to do that. I also heard about checking the cpu clock settings in case they were altered, but doesn't resetting the bios defaults correct that?
Thanks in advance!
I'm now trying to check the motherboard, which has an Intel 633 sticker on the AGP port and the BIOS chip is marked P6BAP-A+ 646. On boot it shows a Celeron CPU running at 633 Mhz and Award modular BIOS P6BAP-AP version 1.3 dated 06-22-2000, I also picked up Rev 2.2 somewhere and have the bios string, which starts with the date.
I'm told the board may have been overclocked on one of the jumper settings and this could be affecting the installs I addressed earlier. The BIOS defaults have the system running at 66 MHz, core voltage 1.5 volts. I didn't look for the CPU multiplier in the BIOS but I'll look for it next time I hook it up.
I have been looking for any motherboard documentation I can find, but there are no jumper maps or manuals of any kind on the internet for this board. I'm willing to buy the manual but couldn't find that either.
There seems to be no standard for labeling jumper settings by function, and I hesitate to do anything until I know what the jumper settings do. The 3-pin jumper next to the CMOS battery/LED1 is labeled JP1. The two 3-pin jumpers next to the CPU socket + cooling fan are labeled JP4 and JP9, and there is another 3-pin jumper above the socket labeled JP2. I know how to read the pins (which ones are open vs shorted, from left to right) but don't know what the config should be. There are other 2, 3 and > pin sockets, none of them with jumpers, and I don't believe they apply to the clock settings/speed of the cmos.
Anyway, any troubleshooting pointers you can give me would be appreciated!
I did use fdisk /mbr and sys c: , thanks.
The initial response was great, I got to the a: prompt even though the floppy disk did not contain boot files. With dir, I saw a list of the files, but was not able to test memory with the memtest86 executable, probably because it only works in a windows environment. Also, the next time I booted up with that floppy, the boot process hung up after verifying DMI pool data, same as before.
The bottom line is that I'd like to build a cheap linux pc, and could buy more parts but they'll do me no good without documentation. I built our win2k PC years ago with an ATX VA mainboard, which is similar to the one I'm trying to troubleshoot. I still have the user manual for the K7T Pro2-A (MS-6330), but the only jumper setting it addresses is the cmos jumper, labeled JBAT1.
Memtest86 is designed to run from a floppy without Windows. If you can't get it to run from a floppy, or if it fails, that sounds like your memory is bad.
If you had Windows available, you could run Aida32 and it would tell us everything about your motherboard: http://www.aida32.hu/aida3
I took the HDD out and loaded RH9 on it from another (Gateway) PC, which I then recalled has PC100 SDRAM in it. So I then swapped out the RAM, put it on the mb I was testing and it worked. I then tried the "bad RAM" on the Gateway and 2 out of 3 DIMMS worked. Weird ( the PC133 DIMM did not work, but I had a 128 MB PC133 DIMM in the Gateway that did) There was nothing on the PC100 DIMM labels or in the appearance of the boards (slightly different because they're from different manufacturers) to indicate a difference in specs. I was told some modules may have been buffered vs unbuffered, and that some mb can read buffered where others cannot. Just read that the notch off-centered (to the side) determines whether the module is "buffered" or "unbuffered." I don't know which is which, in any event I only recall centered notches.
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by: CallandorPosted on 2004-03-09 at 08:01:01ID: 10551402
Have you checked the memory, by swapping in good memory? You can also try the www.memtest86.com diagnostic program. If it passes, that doesn't mean the memory is good, only known good memory will tell you that, but if it fails, the memory is definitely bad.