Not enough info, so no point

[Marko Vojinovic]

On Friday 03 June 2011 09:03:15 n2xssvv.g02gfr12930 wrote:
> I can understand why you suggest that, but why does Fedora 14 work? The
> failure appears to occur during the kernel start up and Fedora 15 has a
> newer kernel, for Live CD, install DVD, and actual installation, and all
> fail appear to fail during kernel start up. Perhaps after Fedora 15 has
> the next kernel update another install will work.

The only scenario that I can imagine, where this kind of thing would be 
possible (F14 working cleanly, F15 failing completely), would be some change 
in the kernel (that goes with F15) which doesn't handle some obscure piece of 
hardware or combination of pieces, that only a small percentage of people 
might have (ie. only you).

I remember from one of your previous posts that you have a SCSI controller and 
some device attached in your machine (it was also visible in your smolt 
profile, IIRC). What is that and what do you have attached there?

I can suggest the following. Disconnect the SCSI device and try the F15 Live 
KDE. Does it work? If not, please send some info on where and how it stops 
(take a picture of the screen, write down what you see on a paper and retype 
in an e-mail, whatever). Continue disconnecting all unnecessary hardware. The 
only thing you *need* in a machine is memory, one hard disk, one CD/DVD drive 
and a video card (and obvious stuff --- a motherboard, processor, power supply, 
keyboard and monitor). Remove everything else, and try to boot the F15 Live 
KDE.

If it still doesn't work, it is either a BIOS problem or your hardware is 
somehow broken in some very weird way (which I doubt, since F14 manages to 
work). You may want to try resetting the BIOS to the default/failsafe values, 
to see if that helps.

If at any step you manage to boot cleanly into the F15 Live KDE, install it on 
the hard disk, reboot into it, do a yum update to fetch all the updates, and 
then start reconnecting other devices one by one. If the system stops booting 
at any point, you have found the culprit. If your system keeps working after 
you have reattached everything, most probably the updates fixed whatever the 
problem was.

A very important point --- *please* send us *detailed* information on where, 
how and what fails to work. If you don't have the technical skills to explain 
the details yourself, take a photo of a screen with a failed boot attempt, and 
post it. You can use a camera built into your mobile phone (or ask a friend 
for one), and you can use a working F14 to put it online.

The boot procedure of a Linux system is very complicated, and it can fail in 
many different ways. If you just say "it doesn't work", noone on this list can 
even begin to guess what might be wrong. At the very least you can tell us 
what was the final message written on the screen after which the system froze 
or self-restarted.

And a social note. As you have seen --- bitching that something doesn't work, 
not providing detailed info, and posting general advice to people to stay away 
from F15 because it doesn't boot on your system --- will only provoke other 
people on this list to label you as a troll and give up on helping you. This 
is a Bad Idea(tm), since you've already driven away most of the knowlegeable 
people with that kind of behavior. If you want to ask for help to solve some 
problem, be polite and cooperative. If you want to vent and bitch that 
something doesn't work as you expect, and give advice to others to stay away 
from something, make a blog and post there, instead of posting on this list. 
This is a "please help me solve a problem"-type list, and "I have a lousy 
experience and a bad opinion"-type posts are not accepted well and rather 
belong on your personal blog.

HTH, :-)
Marko