Guest dmcosta Posted October 11, 2006 Report Share Posted October 11, 2006 Hi! I'm quite a n00b in Linux, and to try and solve that I'm trying to install Mandriva 2007 Free DVD 64bits on my system. I already have Windows XP Pro 64 bits installed (and it works well). But when i try to install the installation frezzes right when i choose the option "Installation" , the screen turns black and the machine just frezzes. And I've tried to use just text mode and ACPI = off and it does the same thing ( with ACPI = off , it shows the installation GUI but frezzes just the same ). My machine is quite new : CPU: AMD Athlon x2 4200 64bits (AM2) Board : M2n32 SLI deluxe wi fi edition ( Nforce 590SLI / Silicon Image® 3132 SATA) Memory: 2x 1Gb 667Mhz Kingston Disks : 2 x 300Gb Maxtor Diamond 10 Graphics card : Asus Extreme Series AX550 ( soon upgrading to Nvidia quadro Fx ) I have the Hard disks in raid 0 using the Nvidia raid driver. Can any one tell me how to work around this issue or if any of my hardware is not compatible?? Thanks in advance Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
arctic Posted October 11, 2006 Report Share Posted October 11, 2006 Try the following: Check if Plug'n Play is disabled in your BIOS. Disconnect all unnecessary devices for now (printers,...). Then try to boot with the following parameters: linux noapic linux nolapic or linux noapic nolapic If that doesn't work, then it is quite probable that your mobo is not yet supported by the Linux kernel. Oh, and software RAID is also a showstopper. The one to blame is not Linux in this case but the hardware vendors. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest dmcosta Posted October 12, 2006 Report Share Posted October 12, 2006 Thanks Artic, but no luck here.... I disabled the Plug'n Play, used the parameters you told me and no luck either it still crashed. But then i disabled almost all of the controllers (firewire, usb, etc) and then the installation started but only with acpi=off. Then, i enabled the controllers one by one and found that the USB controller was crashing the installation. Good news i thought. Then after reading the licence (in a diagonal and kinda quick way) the installer started to look for the Nvidia SATA driver.... it took a loooong time, and then returned an error ( no valid devices can be found ). At this point i opend the asus website to look for linux drivers and to my suprise they were already in the mobo instalation cd so i copyied them to a floppy and tried again. Following the instructions on the readme file (of the linux drivers) that read : "diasble the raid controller ----> on the boot loader use "linux dd" (i used linux dd acpi=off) and the same error popped again ( no valid devices.....). But the installation GUI never asked me for the floppy where the drivers were stored. :unsure: Was the "dd" parameter wrong ? Is this a bug ? Bad sata..... What can i do next? Sorry for the long text but i was afraid i would be missunderstood. Thanks for being available. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ianw1974 Posted October 12, 2006 Report Share Posted October 12, 2006 The command: linux dd is correct, as it should then ask for the floppy when you want to install additional drivers. I've used this with Red Hat, and Mandriva is an rpm distro that was based on Red Hat so the functionality will be the same. I'm surprised it never asked you for them. Sometimes these are needed when the standard kernel doesn't have these drivers within it. You mentioned you are using Raid 0 at present. I'm guessing you have two disks linked together, effectively acting as one disk? If so, have you configured this through using the hardware, or is it being done through software? If you're using the Raid 0 with a driver through Windows, then obviously this is going to cause problems if you're trying to dual boot the system with Windows. With Software Raid, you're going to have to ensure that there is one partition on the disk that is nothing to do with the software raid - and this is where you need to install your second OS. Both OS's can't be configured to use Raid 0 if you've allocated most of the disk to Windows for this purpose. I use software raid at home, but I only use Mandriva 2007. I have 2 x 160GB disks, and they are configured for Raid 1 (mirroring). This means if one disk dies, I can still use my system until I buy another disk to replace the failed one. Of course, I could use Raid 0, but I value my data :P You need to think about what you're trying to achieve here. If you want two operating systems on it, then you need to decide which one will be software raid 0, and the other, in a partition that isn't related to software raid, but a standard partition. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest dmcosta Posted October 12, 2006 Report Share Posted October 12, 2006 Hey ianw1974! Thanks for taking the time to read this thread. In the Mandriva 2007 DVD i586 AND x86 64 bits (thats the DVD I've got) the installer has an option there to set if i have a driver disk or not... but if i state that "YES" i have a driver disk the installer will simply proceed without asking me for any driver or disks the first thing i see is the language selection interface... then the licence...then he tries to find a SATA driver for himself dispite my floppy. And has for the Raid ... i'm using Hardware raid... i'm using the raid that the mobo chipset has ( NVIDIA 590 SLI MCP) I've enabled it on the BIOS so if i have it disabled windows doesn't even start. It's hardware RAID almost certain. I saw another user that has the same issues on this forum : Kernal panic on AMD x2 64 He states : Asus M2N-E (Socket AM2, nForce 570 Ultra MCP Chipset)- Athlon 64 X2 3800+ - Asus Extreme N7300GT/Silencer, 256 MB DDR - 2 GB Kingston Value PC533 DDR2 - SATA WD Raptor 74 GB - SATA WD 250 GB - already had: Yamaha CRW-F1 CD-RW Drive - already had: LG Super MultiDrive (All formats) Well, well. I was happy to download Mandriva Free 2006 x86_64 and to install it. The installation process went very well, but at first boot I got exactly the same message as above. Of course I began to Google around and checked/achieved the following (with 'boot failed' I mean the error message listed above): - installed mandriva x86_64 with noapic option checked - boot failed - tryed to install mandriva x86_32 - installation failed - deactivated following in BIOS: HDD SMART, PnP OS, HD Audio - boot failed - updated BIOS from 103 to 302 version - boot failed - tryed RESCUE mode and reinstalling LILO - boot failed - tryed to install SATA and NVIDIA drivers boxed with the mainboard on the Support CD (Rev.243.02) by copying them (RHEL4_U2) on a FD, but though I started mandriva x86_65 install with <F1> an then 'boot: linux dd', mandriva didn't ask for drivers The only difference is that he actually installed Mandriva 2006 i can't even install 2007 Another user wrote on the same thread : Finally, I have been able to get my Dual Core system to boot a 64-bit SMP kernel. I downloaded and installed the kernel-2.6.12-12mdksmp package on top of my LE2005 system. Boy, is it FAST!!!! There are some quirks and issues however: --The system clock runs fast , 40% faster than it should. --USB Storage does not work at all. I don't even see it when I do an lsmod command --I had to upgrade gcc as well as perl, apache, php and a few other things. I did try LE2006.0 Beta 3. It's a little too beta-ish for my liking to use. I'll either live with the quirks or maybe I will be able to fix the above isuues over time. The experience of getting this Beast (64-bit Linux) running smoothly on my Dual-Core Athlon 64 processor has been more than a challenge, I do not want to go throught this odyssey ever again. I just hope that the final productional, 64-bit version of LE2006 is not as painful as the 64-bit version of LE2005. This looks very similar to my problem..... and no solution in sight Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ianw1974 Posted October 12, 2006 Report Share Posted October 12, 2006 Hardware raid is the best way to go, at least you can do dual boot without worrying with it. So that's good. I'll have to check with 2007 tomorrow, and see how I can get it working and post back and say how to do it. I did with Red Hat no problem, but each distro is different, so will let you know. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest dmcosta Posted October 12, 2006 Report Share Posted October 12, 2006 Thanks Ian Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ianw1974 Posted October 13, 2006 Report Share Posted October 13, 2006 I've just been checking with the Mandriva 2007 DVD that I have. The only way I could get it to work with the driver was to press F3 for more options, and then press F5 for driver. Setting it to "Yes" didn't work, so I set it to "File", but then it asks you to type in the drivers that you want, which isn't all that great. When I used "linux dd" in Red Hat, you just had to find the floppy and away you go. Or in my case, I had to put another CD in the machine. Maybe what would be best is put the drivers you need on a CD, but not within a directory, just at the root of the CD, so / effectively, not /drivers or whatever. That way, it'll just look at the CD and find the drivers without you having to worry about much. I've started to find now, that they are moving towards CD than attempting to use a floppy disk for additional drivers nowadays. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest dmcosta Posted October 13, 2006 Report Share Posted October 13, 2006 Thanks for taking a look. I'll try it later at home, but I think they should take a look at it. Because this is just just one machine, but what if I had 3 machines or more with different mobos ? Will I have to append all the drivers to the ISO? What if I would like to install from that recently burned DVD on another machine? I will have to burn another ISO? That doesn't stop me from installing Linux, not at all, but it sure makes it a bit more frustrating to install. At least for me considering that I'm a novice. On top of that, I still have to find out why the installation boot loader freezes when i have ACPI on and why doesn't even start when I have the USB controller activated. Again thanks for your time. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gowator Posted October 13, 2006 Report Share Posted October 13, 2006 (edited) Hey ianw1974! Thanks for taking the time to read this thread. In the Mandriva 2007 DVD i586 AND x86 64 bits (thats the DVD I've got) the installer has an option there to set if i have a driver disk or not... but if i state that "YES" i have a driver disk the installer will simply proceed without asking me for any driver or disks the first thing i see is the language selection interface... then the licence...then he tries to find a SATA driver for himself dispite my floppy. And has for the Raid ... i'm using Hardware raid... i'm using the raid that the mobo chipset has ( NVIDIA 590 SLI MCP) I've enabled it on the BIOS so if i have it disabled windows doesn't even start. It's hardware RAID almost certain. I haven't used that chipset but I wouldn't be so certain its not SW RAID....This is a really common cause of confusion ... and Im sure i have a post on here somewhere about it :D There are a whole slew of RAID controllers being built in to mobo's but they are all as far as I can tell SW unless the mobo costs over $1000 ....obviously the manufacturers don't actually advertise this so its not easy to be sure. If its true HW Raid then its set-up in the bios of the RAID controller not managed through a program in windows or linux... If you can actualy define the RAID stripes in bios (not just switch it on and off) then its HW but if you have to create them in an OS then its SW... however there is also the mid ground firmware... The fact windows won't boot is not really proof its not Sw raid .. because the RAID drivers are loaded right at the beginning... edits: I have the Hard disks in raid 0 using the Nvidia raid driver. Sorry, its not HW RAID then because HW RAID doesn't use a driver... In true HW RAID the RAID controller uses its own firmware to make the array look like a single disk and the OS doesn't need to even know its an array. Edited October 13, 2006 by Gowator Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest dmcosta Posted October 13, 2006 Report Share Posted October 13, 2006 I haven't used that chipset but I wouldn't be so certain its not SW RAID....This is a really common cause of confusion ... and Im sure i have a post on here somewhere about it :D There are a whole slew of RAID controllers being built in to mobo's but they are all as far as I can tell SW unless the mobo costs over $1000 ....obviously the manufacturers don't actually advertise this so its not easy to be sure. If its true HW Raid then its set-up in the bios of the RAID controller not managed through a program in windows or linux... If you can actualy define the RAID stripes in bios (not just switch it on and off) then its HW but if you have to create them in an OS then its SW... however there is also the mid ground firmware... The fact windows won't boot is not really proof its not Sw raid .. because the RAID drivers are loaded right at the beginning... In the BIOS I can turn off and on the RAID controller and define what SATA disks i'll be using in the raid configuration. Then after save and exit, after POST I'm prompted to press F10 if I I want to use the RAID configuration utility to manage the RAID settings, define stripes... So my guess goes to firmware... However, I'll try and check that out with Asus. Thanks for the pointer. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
emmanuel_uk Posted October 13, 2006 Report Share Posted October 13, 2006 590 SLI MCP this is a good reference http://linuxmafia.com/faq/Hardware/sata.html fakeraid indeed I cannot find anything to help you if you have a live cd, maybe you could post the output of lspci for that controller, it might help future searches Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ianw1974 Posted October 13, 2006 Report Share Posted October 13, 2006 You don't append the files to the Mandriva CD, but burn them to a blank CD, and then exchange the CD's when prompted to load the drivers. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gowator Posted October 13, 2006 Report Share Posted October 13, 2006 In the BIOS I can turn off and on the RAID controller and define what SATA disks i'll be using in the raid configuration. Then after save and exit, after POST I'm prompted to press F10 if I I want to use the RAID configuration utility to manage the RAID settings, define stripes... So my guess goes to firmware... However, I'll try and check that out with Asus. Thanks for the pointer. Well if you can just turn off RAID you can use SW RAID in Linux....presuming you don't want to use windows as well. I doubt you will loose any speed ... but this supposes the SATA controller is supported as a standard (non-RAID) controller.... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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