Tovenaar Posted December 18, 2003 Report Share Posted December 18, 2003 Hello all, I'm new to linux. I got interested in an alternative operating system due to a free linux cd (Knoppix). I talked to a friend about this and he uses mandrake 9.2 . So I copied his cd's and wanted to install it on my old laptop to see what it could do. laptop specs: HP Omnibook 2100 intel pentuim I 266 Mhz 96 MB RAM 4,3 GB HD 2MB neomagic videocard Toshiba CD-ROM drive Floppy drive I only have one slot for either a CD-ROM drive of Floppy drive. So I putted in teh CD-Rom drive, changed the bios to make the drive bootable and putted in the first CD of mandrake 9.2 . The CD boots. So that works. I see the first blue screen where I can either press <enter> to install of <F1> for extra option. I pressed <enter>. Then mandrake install check numberous hardware items. Then I get a black screen with below the text"press <alt>+<F1> for here <alt>+<f3> ofr kernel msg (or something). In the middle of teh screen is a blue rectangle with text in it. It states what it is doing. After this he states in the blue box "trying to access mandrake installation". After 20 sec there is an error: "cannot access the mandrake installation", retry, back, no. With restry the same msg comes onscreen. With back and no you will get in a box with the question what scsi device it shoud check, with al list of all mods to choose from. none work. The strange thing is the cd of mandrake works perfectly on my desktop. Also my laptop had never before problems with the CD-ROM drive. I can still boot from the win98 CD-ROm or the Knoppix CD-ROM. What is the problem? What am I doing wrong? (I even downloaded the iso's again, checked them, burned them and they work on my desktop pc but still the same problem on my laptop.) Greetings and thanks, Tovenaar Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ixthusdan Posted December 18, 2003 Report Share Posted December 18, 2003 Two things to try is to launch without dma enabled or apci. These can have an effect on the installer, and can be turned back on later. So, at the prompt, hit F1, and type "linux noapci nodma", and see if the install progresses any further. I am also moving the to the notebook forum, since others might know better with your particular notebook. And welcome to Mandrakeusers.org! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
liquidzoo Posted December 18, 2003 Report Share Posted December 18, 2003 If what Ix suggested doesn't work, you might consider re-burning the cd's (at least cd 1) at a slower speed. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pmpatrick Posted December 19, 2003 Report Share Posted December 19, 2003 Your problem is not uncommon with laptop cdroms, particularly swapable or pcmcia drives. Try lxthusdan's suggestion first and if that doesn't work you can try doing the F1 thing but this time type w/o quotes "linux ide2=0x180,0x386". That works for some devices. The install program is having trouble picking up the ide channel that the drive is on. Once the install program loads it gets lost. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tovenaar Posted December 19, 2003 Author Report Share Posted December 19, 2003 Thanks for all the responses. I'll try all the sollutions you suggested. I'll be back with my results. Anyway. I tried something else last night. I will not give up on this. So I accepted it would not install through my cd-rom drive of my laptop (for the time being). I was reading the install guides on the cd's and I found out I could install Mandrake over network. My laptop has a Xircom network pcmcia card and my desktop has a realtek networkcard and I have a cross-cable. I have been playing some games over my 1-1 network with my laptop and my desktop under winXP(deskto) and win98(laptop) and this worked smoothly. So why not try and install it over the network. Setup: laptop - pcmciacard Xircom destkop - PCIcard Realtek cross-cable desktop os - winXP laptop os - use the pcmcia.img disk from CD1(mandrake) So WinXp is fully booted. CD1(mandrake) is located in my CD writer in my desktop pc. Forces an IPadres: 10.1.1.1 , name: COMPUTER My partition information: 1 HD of 30 GB 4 partitions c: 6 GB d: 6 GB e: 7 GB f: 11 GB 2 CD drives, 1 DVD and one writer. THe DVD is G: and the writer is H:. So the CD is in the H: drive. I booted the laptop with the imaged floppy. All is well. pcmcia is being activated. Then I get to choose the way I want to install mandrake. options: NFS FTP HTTP CD-ROM Harddrive Now, which option should I use to install over my locall network? I tried the first 3 options. I will have to give the laptop an IPadres: 10.1.1.2 DNS 10.1.1.1 Default gateway 10.1.1.1 submask 255.255.255.0 . Then I get the msg "bringing up network". When this dissappears it takes a long time before the next msg come onscreen. This usually is a msg with something like "could not guess host, please enter hostname or IPadres and domainname" or "could not guess host, please enter hostname and the directory of teh mandrake installation". I can ping from my winXp to 10.1.1.2 so the network works. I just cannot give the mandrake installation the right infomation to find CD1 in mijn desktop pc in the CDwriter(H:). What option should I use for installation and what info should I give to get the laptop to understand where CD1 is located? Thanks for your time? Greetings, Tovenaar Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tovenaar Posted December 19, 2003 Author Report Share Posted December 19, 2003 Hello again, I consulted some people I accedently ran into about installing through network. I need to install ftp-server on my winXP desktop to make it accesable for the laptop to see my desktop. Then I can use the ftp-protocol to install mandrake. So I'm going to try that also if the suggestions on the CD-ROM drive don't work. Thanks again for your time. Ill be back with my report. Greetings, Tovenaar Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pmpatrick Posted December 19, 2003 Report Share Posted December 19, 2003 If you have broadband, you can do an ftp install from any mandrake repository on the net. It might be easier than trying to do a local network install. That's how I typically do my laptop which has a pcmcia cd drive that mandrake and many other distros hate. After the install is done I network the laptop to my desktop through a router hub used for internet connection sharing then download the entire distro tree to my desktop using "wget -r". That serves as my local source for both my laptop and desktop. You just have to set up the source on the laptop going through the network share which can be easily done in mandrake control center. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tovenaar Posted December 22, 2003 Author Report Share Posted December 22, 2003 hi people, After the weekend I'm back with the report. I tried both sollutions mentioned by Ixthusdan and pmpatrick. Both failed. Then I reburned at a lower speed just like LiquidZoo said. But again no success. I have no broadband available so using ftp install though internet is going to take VERY long.... no option. So back to teh beginning. Still trying to get up the ftp local server (almost there). Thanks for all suggestions. Greetings, Tovenaar Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pzatch Posted December 22, 2003 Report Share Posted December 22, 2003 You could try a hard drive install using the floppy image on disk one. More detailed instructions should searchable here on the site. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tovenaar Posted December 22, 2003 Author Report Share Posted December 22, 2003 Harddisk install is indeed a sollution. but my harddisk is not big enough for the installdisk and the installation. So when I copy the CD to my harddrive and startup with a bootdisk the installation doesn't fit on my harddrive. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dalmolin Posted December 22, 2003 Report Share Posted December 22, 2003 I have been having a similar problem installing Mandrake 9.2 on a Dell Inspiron 3500, with a Toshiba CD-ROM drive. I had no problem installing Mandrake 9.1...but it was not stable on my computer so I decided to try 9.2....which as I said does not install. It hangs part way through saying "i can't access a Mandrake Linux Installation disc". I tried passing the parameters after hitting F1 as suggested but that did not work....what did work was doing an FTP install...I have broadband....so there was a work around at least for my machine. Did not try a local FTP install...that should have worked too I assume. Nevertheless this is a problem as notebooks travel and access to broadband is difficult....I hope someone is working on this because I really like Mandrake's distro. Cheers, Joseph Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Peep Posted January 4, 2004 Report Share Posted January 4, 2004 when it says it can't access the cdrom, if it gives you an option of selecting the correct driver from a list, you can try to figure out which driver might make your cdrom work. (mine, for instance, is a firewire drive that mandrake doesn't autodetect, but if i install 3 separate drivers, it works just fine... a pain, but it works) you might be able to google to find what drivers your cdrom uses. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tovenaar Posted January 5, 2004 Author Report Share Posted January 5, 2004 Hello again. I managed to partly install mandrake 9.2 with a local ftp link. but then the laptop lost its connection with the local ftp server. I tried is a couple of times. Worked quite wel, but I think the connection was bad for some reason. Because the connection failed during the installation, and everytime on a different place in the installation. Anyhow I got really annoyed. I formatted my HD and all 3 CD's on a fat32 partition on the HD. This took 2200 MB of my 3960 MB HD. Leaving little over 1700 MB for mandrake. I installed mandrake from HD install, only resized the root partition, making it bigger and the home share smaller. After the install I imaged the fat32 partition with win98. So now I run win98 and mandrake. Only to run mandrake with a 40MB big Home share. Oh well, at least it is installed and running. Thanks for all the time and advice. Greetings, Tovenaar Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FUNWAKINMADE Posted January 21, 2004 Report Share Posted January 21, 2004 Hi guys I’m also a newbie to linux: down here in Nigeria, it isn’t so well known (yet!) but after all the reviews I have read……it’s the way to go. I procured a brand new HP Pavilion laptop ZE4560 (Athlon 1.9ghz, 512MB ram and 40 gigger) but with XP Home (aaaarggghh!!). Not only is “Microslop” living up to the biling (constant rebooting!!) but the whole thingy (interface and all) is seriously affecting my productivity!! Well….i have installed Mandrake 8.2 on my laptop without much probems but Red Hat 9 has proven IMPOSSIBLE. It always hangs at the beginning of the installation. I have tried everything (I know) but to na avail!! What gives?? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jeber Posted January 23, 2004 Report Share Posted January 23, 2004 FUNWAKINMADE, are you installing from disk or? I have a Toshiba 2415-S205 on which Red Hat 9.0 installed just fine, from the boxed set CD-ROMs. The reason I switched to Mandrake 9.2 is that I dual-boot XP Pro, and Red Hat can't read NTFS files. And now that RH will no longer support their OS, I took that as another sign to switch. I've also tried SUSE 9.0, but still prefer Drake. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.