disco_lad Posted September 27, 2005 Report Share Posted September 27, 2005 I have Mandrake 10.1 with a pentium I I think 133MH proc with 64 MB and I think 2.5 GB Harddrive. During my instalation I get a funny error and have to reboot. So I checked out and found out that I don't have enought vram. For 10.1 would I not have enought space? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
theYinYeti Posted September 28, 2005 Report Share Posted September 28, 2005 I wonder what "vram" is... How far do you get into the boot process? If you go as far as a login prompt, and you are able to login, then could you post the result of: # cat /proc/cpuinfo and # tail -n 10 /var/log/messages (or "boot" instead if you see it) I don't know if the last 10 lines will be enough, but I won't ask you to copy 100 lines by hand ;) Yves. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
arctic Posted September 28, 2005 Report Share Posted September 28, 2005 I wonder what "vram" is... <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Video Random Access Memory or Dual ported RAM. Short for video RAM, and pronounced vee-ram. VRAM is special-purpose memory used by video adapters. Unlike conventional RAM, VRAM can be accessed by two different devices simultaneously. This enables the RAMDAC to access the VRAM for screen updates at the same time that the video processor provides new data. VRAM yields better graphics performance but is more expensive than normal RAM. A special type of VRAM, called Windows RAM (WRAM), yields even better performance than conventional VRAM. (http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/V/VRAM.html) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
disco_lad Posted September 30, 2005 Author Report Share Posted September 30, 2005 OK From when you start your computer up and Mandrake ask you to press "F1" or "Enter" to install with in seconds I get a "fatal error giving hand to second stage." When I press <ALT-F3> I get this message *Total Memory: 64 Mbytes *Warning, ramdisk is not possible due to low mem! *copy_file: /etc/resolv.conf -> /sysroot/etc/resolv.conf * /etc/resolv.conf : No such file or directory *copy_file: /modules/modules.dep -> /sysroot/modules/modules.dep *pivot_rooting *unsetting automatic If I press <ATL-F4> I get Buffer I/O error on divice hdc, logical block 339533 attempt to access beyond end of device hdc : rw=0, want 1357640, limit 443332 is my hard drive bad or something? or is there not enough space? What a headach to learn Linux! (or I need better parts lol) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
theYinYeti Posted September 30, 2005 Report Share Posted September 30, 2005 This is a problem totally unknown to me, sorry... :unsure: Yves. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
scarecrow Posted September 30, 2005 Report Share Posted September 30, 2005 You have to try a *lighter* Linux distro (say Damn Small Linux or Vector Linux), and a minimalistic window manager (IceWM, Fluxbox...) to run Linux with GUI in such an anhaemic machine. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wilcal Posted September 30, 2005 Report Share Posted September 30, 2005 I have Mandrake 10.1 with a pentium I I think 133MHproc with 64 MB and I think 2.5 GB Harddrive....... OK From when you start your computer up and Mandrake ask you to press "F1" or "Enter" to install with in seconds I get a "fatal error giving hand to second stage." When I press <ALT-F3> I get this message *Total Memory: 64 Mbytes *Warning, ramdisk is not possible due to low mem!....... is my hard drive bad or something? or is there not enough space? What a headach to learn Linux! (or I need better parts lol) By mistake I set up a 7.5MB (MegaByte) partition on one of my removable hard drives a couple days ago and attempted to install Ubuntu 5.10 to it. That thing klanged and clattered for about 30 minutes spewing error notices all over the screen but being unaware of the microscopic space I had alloted to it I just let it go on. When that thing booted it did all kinda strange stuff. Time for a new puter Dude. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JonEberger Posted September 30, 2005 Report Share Posted September 30, 2005 another option is to look for an older version of the distribution. i know you can still find older versions around. mandrake 8.2 (if you can find it somewhere) might be my favorite mandrake version ever and it would've run pretty well on your machine. i recommend then downloading and installing the source for fluxbox. a quick google will find this easily. i run it on my p4 because it frees up so many processes. if you need the eye-candy of gnome or kde, i suggest you look for a stouter pc. the only problem with using the old distro and the new packages is that you might have to do some dependency resolution. i don't know if there is an easyurpmi site for old mandrake versions. if so...that's the way to go. because urpmi will make your life way easier. what are you looking to do with this machine? is it just going to be a server, or do you need the gui? i don't know if memory is your only issue, but if you need the memory, depending on your mobo, pc100 is pretty cheap. that might be a decent fix for cheap. you can find systems that are considerably better for reasonably small amounts of money. heck....most of us have old systems that we'd give to you. good luck. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
disco_lad Posted September 30, 2005 Author Report Share Posted September 30, 2005 To get some of you people up to date I'm using this Pentium I I think 133MH computer with 64 MB of ram 2.5 GB harddrive. When this computer was put together there was no such thing as PC 100 is was SIMM or DIMM that was it. I am using this computer to learn how to make a server and to run advance webpage design (SQL, PHP, etc...). Would it be eaiser to install a non GUI interface for this purpose? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Crashdamage Posted October 1, 2005 Report Share Posted October 1, 2005 As I said earlier, you should be able to install 10.1, (unless your bios won't cooperate with a 2.6 kernel as YinYeti suggested) but NOT KDE or Gnome. Your machine will not run them. Think of it like this: KDE and Gnome are XP-class (or better) full desktop environments, with hardware requirements to match. You wouldn't expect your old box to run XP, so why expect it to run recent versions of KDE or Gnome? Keeping that in mind, your box wiil do fine for a server or router/firewall, but probably not "to run advanced webpage design". Still very useful to learn some stuff... DO install at least a couple of lightweight window managers like IceWM, Fluxbox, etc. They will not limit what you can do, they're just not so Windoze-like, so you might have to learn some different tricks. OK From when you start your computer up and Mandrake ask you to press "F1" or Enter" to install within seconds I get a "fatal error giving hand to second stage."When I press <ALT-F3> I get this message *Total Memory: 64 Mbytes *Warning, ramdisk is not possible due to low mem!....... The installer is telling you it needs more than 64MB of memory to do a GUI install. You need to do a text-mode install. Do the 'F1' thing, but at the prompt type 'text'. You should be good to go that way. Choose your packages manually and skip KDE and Gnome. If you choose a package to install the requires some KDE or Gnome libraries, the installer will sort that out for you, installing only what you need. If for whatever reason you still can't get 10.1 to install, then like I said before and JonEnberger and scarecrow also suggested, you can either try an older version of Mandrake like 8.2, which was excellent, or another lighter distro intended for meager hardware. If I press <ATL-F4> I getBuffer I/O error on divice hdc, logical block 339533 attempt to access beyond end of device hdc : rw=0, want 1357640, limit 443332 I'm not sure what's up with this since the main (and I assume in this case only) HD is usually named hda, not hdc. Also, seems it's trying to access and area not on the disk. Get into the bios and make sure the drive is properly detected. If it's not it may be hooked up wrong, like to the secondary IDE controller, set as a slave or maybe just in need of a good formatting. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
disco_lad Posted October 1, 2005 Author Report Share Posted October 1, 2005 I think the hdc was hda I was a cross the room when I tried to type it out. I think I toasted the HD long time ago when I tried installing linux and was formating the drive. If this is the same drive half way through the format I think I had power loss and was not done properly is there a way to recover the missing part of the HD or am I at a loss I tried to do a low level format but I don't think it worked unless someone knows what is the best what to do it? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Crashdamage Posted October 1, 2005 Report Share Posted October 1, 2005 Is the drive shown correctly in the BIOS? Have you tried starting a text install and reformatting the drive from there? The formatting tools in Linux are about as good as they get and can format the disk in FAT32, NTFS or your choice of several Lnux file systems. And remember, now that you have a Linux file system (partially?) installed trying to format the disk with something like a Win98 boot disk will not work - Win is too stupid and stubborn to recognize anything but Windoze file formats. So to try and fix the drive you now have to use something to reformat that can deal with Linux file systems. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JonEberger Posted October 1, 2005 Report Share Posted October 1, 2005 (edited) To get some of you people up to date I'm using this Pentium I I think 133MH computer with 64 MB of ram 2.5 GB harddrive. When this computer was put together there was no such thing as PC 100 is was SIMM or DIMM that was it. I am using this computer to learn how to make a server and to run advance webpage design (SQL, PHP, etc...). Would it be eaiser to install a non GUI interface for this purpose? <{POST_SNAPBACK}> actually i'm pretty sure there were pentium class 133 MHz that used the pc66 sdram. i said depending on your mobo, because if yours is one of those that did the pc66 ram, then pc100/133 abounds in computer stores around. most of the sdram is backward compatible. but, you're probably like all the rest of us, and know exactly what your hardware is. with the advance webpage design, then the gui might be nice. i'd def. put one of the lightweight windowmanagers on. good luck wth it all. Edited October 1, 2005 by JonEberger Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
disco_lad Posted October 1, 2005 Author Report Share Posted October 1, 2005 Ok as for the history lesson I don't remember much computer stuff of that time. But to tell you the truth I have a 150 Mh processor. With out taking off the heat sink I think it's a Cyrix, and not a true Pentuim. As for present day problem with linux and this computer I tried stuff out. Does anyone know what a low level format is? If I am mistaken it's the same as a factory format. I think the problem is HD related and linux will run no problem, if I solve the HD problem first. I said it is a 2.5 but I belive it is truly a 4GB HD. most operating software I know are not able to do a low level format. the bios shows the model name and number. I could change the manual setting for the cylinders and stuff but it's still the same. I think when mandrake tries to format the HD. It sees the full size not the size that is still good. So far I get the same results unless I go into advance mode. Is there a way to fix my HD or can I trick linux to thinking that I have 2.5 GB? oh ya I tried the text version of the install too same results! since this has become a hardware problem should I be asking in the hardware forum??? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
disco_lad Posted October 2, 2005 Author Report Share Posted October 2, 2005 Iguess I'm stuck on this one huh? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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