install woes

Nigel Henry cave.dnb2m97pp at aliceadsl.fr
Wed Jul 30 13:25:41 UTC 2008


On Wednesday 30 July 2008 11:29, whoosh wrote:
> first I downloaded the Fedora Core 9 64 DVD iso, took many hours,
>
> but on attempting to install, it freezes up at the test media screen.
>
>
> I then downloaded all the FC9 64 CD isos, tried the first one and
> it freezes up at the test media screen.
>
> I tried submitting a report on the University of Kent form, but that
> failed!
>
>
> I then tried the FC9 64 net install CD and it freezes up on the
> choose language screen.
>
> The PC is an AMD Sempron 64 tower, from probably 2006. I thought
> maybe there are bugs in the early AMD64 CPUs.
>
> so I tried the FC9 32 net install iso, freezes up on the "Choose a
> language"
>
> screen. That suggests it isnt a 64 bit bug.
>
>
>
> I tried Ubuntu 64, 8.04.1 that freezes up once the desktop appears.
>
>
>
>
>
> when I say freeze up I mean no response to keyboard (or mouse for Ubuntu).
>
>
>
> I installed FC3 some years ago without problem, and I use FC3 and Windows
> XP
>
> all the time without problem.

This may not be of much help, but I recently built a new machine with an Asus 
M2N-X Plus mobo (sktAM2), and an AMD64 3800+ CPU. Nothing at all would boot 
on it, install discs, or live cd's, (keyboard, mouse, whole machine locked 
up), until I disabled acpi in the BIOS, so that may be worth a try.

I still had a bunch of problems installing some distros. Kubuntu Gutsy Gibbon 
7.10 (live cd, with option to install on desktop once booted) booted, and got 
as far as startx, but locked up before showing the KDM splash screen.

Fedora 8 installed ok, but I had problems booting post install, and had to do 
an interactive startup, as it was hanging at starting some services 
(ip6tables, and cpu frequency scaling), which I then said (NO) to during the 
interactive startup. It looks like I may have had problems also, when it got 
booted as far as startx, with locking up prior to displaying GDM login 
screen, as I see that I've appended the kernel line in /boot/grub/menu.lst 
with noapic nolapic

Then I tried installing Kubuntu Breezy, which is perhaps a similar age to your 
FC3, and that installed ok, using the kernel 2.6.12-9-386. Upgraded Breezy to 
Dapper, as I had the updates lying about on another disk, which gave me a new 
kernel 2.6.15-52-386. Rebooted into the new kernel, and it got as far as 
displaying KDM to login, but again everything was locked up. Well I knew that 
it booted ok with the original kernel, so tried it just to very that Dapper 
would work ok with the older kernel, and no problems. Not sure if I tried 
appending the new kernel with noapic nolapic, but if I did it didn't work, as 
I ended up booting into runlevel 1, tried startx, and the KDE desktop opened 
with no probs. So I thought I'd boot into runlevel 3, login, and try startx 
as user. Appended the kernel line with a 3 in grub, booted, and no runlevel 
3, but now the new kernel (2.6.15) has no problems, KDM opens, and I login 
with no probs. Thats a bit weird, I know, but seems to indicate perhaps, that 
it might be a kernel related problem, all these freeze ups, as no prob with 
2.6.12, but probs with 2.6.15, and later.

Sorry for this very long post, but persevere please.

Now back to Kubuntu Gutsy Gibbon 7.10. I tried alsorts to try and stop it 
locking up when starting X. noapic, nolapic, acpi=off, noapic nolapic 
(together), ll to no avail. The kernel line to boot the live cd also had a 
bit "forcevesa" or something like that. I thought that should have been ok. 
The pci-E graphics card is ati, but usually vesa works ok if ati won't, but I 
did notice that the the monitors menu showed a resolution of 1640 x 
something, and my monitor uses 1024 x 768, so maybe the lockups were due to 
the monitor/graphics card being totally out of range, when trying to use 
either the vesa or ati driver with booting the live cd.

I removed the forcevesa bit from the kernel line, and appended it with 
acpi=off, and booted, it got as far as starting x, tried to start it a couple 
of times, then dropped me back into text mode. Can't remember if I directly 
edited /etc/X11/xorg.conf, to change the max res to 1024 x 768, or if I ran
dpkg --reconfigure -phigh xserver-xorg, but either way, once done a startx got 
me the login screen, and I got the live cd's desktop. Clicked on the icon to 
install to harddrive, and that went ok, but I still have to append the kernel 
line in /boot/grub/menu.lst with acpi=off, otherwise the machine locks up 
when starting x.

Apologies for the long post again, but there may something here that will you 
a few pointers.

As I said though, nothing would boot at all, until I disabled acpi in the 
BIOS.

Btw, the processor is 64 bit, but all my installed distros are 32 bit (i386). 
I also tried the 1st cd for Fedora 9 to see if there were any boot problems, 
but as a few days have passed now, and have just finished dl'ing disk 6 (on 
dialup), I can't remember any specific bootup problems for Fedora 9, apart 
from acpi needing to be disabled in the BIOS.

All the best.

Nigel.




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