KDE Live Install of 2007, bootloader?

[Guest kirsch92]

I have been trying out different flavors of Linux as I would like to ditch MS. Have tryed openSUSE and SimplyMepis and Freespire. I have used them Live and installed on my drive.

 

I already have a 15 gig ext3 for root, 2 gig swap, and 22 gig ext3 home partitions on my second drive as a result of this testing. After each test i rewrite my mbr to windows to avoid any Linux bootloader issues.

 

All have installed fairly easily. The Mandriva Live CD works fantasticly well, so I decided to install. It uses the above mentioned partitions. The install starts, the progress bar with the (pictures of the versions of Mandriva, moves along to 100%. Then it turns white and appears to hang for 5 or ten minutes, then it continues and asks about about bootloader, so I chose GRUB graphical and sda1 as boot. Then it asks the halt sys, remove live cd and reboot.

So I click finish, choose shutdown and restart. System shuts down live cd and i remove it, sys reboots to bootloader.

 

If I choose Mandriva, it hangs there on the orange screen with the progress bar, giving me nothing.

I tried, noapic, nolapic and acpi= off to no avail.

 

In safe mode it starts its text start up and here is what i get about where all appears to go wrong:

Creating root device

No resume device specified

Trying userspace resume from suspend.conf file

No resume device in suspend.conf

echo: cannot open /proc/suspend2/do_resume for write :2

Mounting root file system /dev/root

mount: error 6 mounting ext3 flags defaults

well, retrying read-only without any flag

mount: error 6 mounting ext3

switching to new root

ERROR opening /dev/console!!!!:2

unmounting old /proc

unmounting old /sys

switchroot: mount failed :22

Initrd finished

Kernel panic -not syncing :Attempted to kill init!

(Blinking cursor)

As a total newbie, I am sure it's something easy. Is it looking in wrong place?

 

Thanks, Jeremy

[neddie]

This "second drive" you're installing Mandriva on, is it an external hard drive connected by USB?

 

If so, it could be the same problem described in this other thread. Spring installed flawlessly on my internal hard drive but gives the same error message as you when I tried to install it on an external USB hard drive. I don't understand it, but apparently it's not quite as easy as you might think.

[Guest kirsch92]

neddie wrote: This "second drive" you're installing Mandriva on, is it an external hard drive connected by USB?

 

No, both drives are internal SATA. Board is SATA 150, as is my first drive. Second is a 300 jumpered down to 150mb/sec. All other distros have lived happily in those partitions.

 

I was able to access all files on both drives in all distros I tried live (except openSUSE had to be installed) and installed.

I didn't check access with Mandriva Live, since they weren't mounted automatically, and I don't have a root ID live. I assumed it just didn't like mounting all partitions live like the openSUSE distro.

 

Another note, I checked the md5 of the iso. I downloaded, all OK. This live cd did not have a check of the CD, and I am not sure how to check the burned disk. But I assume all is OK, since it worked so well live.

 

As polished as this Live CD was, the installer was probably the least user friendly of all the distros i have tried. Very little feed back given during the process. Anytime an install appears to hang in the middle, I tend to pucker a bit. It may be normal for all I know.

[Guest Pete D64]

I've just tried installing 2007.1 ONE KDE today & I'm getting the same symptoms.

 

Booting from live CD works well & I can even access my wireless network with a quick configure so I'm impressed.

 

I've installed a new 2nd SATA disk into the PC to use for Linux. Went through the live install procedure to load to the 2nd drive (sdb) & got the blank screen for around 10 mins as well.

 

Machine now boots up to grub menu. I can still boot into windows but not Mandriva. For the default boot option it switches to the Madriva One screen the disk blips & then nothing happens. If I choose the safe mode option I get the same error messages as in the first post.

 

My PC is a slightly unusual desktop config with a Pentium M processor installed in an AOpen i915GMm-hfs motherboard, Nvidia 7600GS graphics card & 2 400GB SATA drives. New one is a 400GB Hitachi Deskstar.

 

If noone has any suggestions I'll try re-organising the other disk & installing Mandriva on there.

[Guest kirsch92]

Pete,

Is your install at the beginning of your second drive?

Mine is at the end after two NTFS partitions. I was going to move some stuff around and repartion the first as an ext3 to see if that helped.

 

I may not bother if you have the same problem.

Maybe Mandriva doesn't like out SATA controllers? I think I read something about that somewhere. Maybe a rumor in the wind?

 

Jeremy

[Guest Pete D64]

Is your install at the beginning of your second drive?

 

Yes. It's a brand new drive so it's the only thing on there.

 

When I've got some time I'll try moving the 2 windows data partitions from my primary drive to the new one & see if I can install it on the other drive.

[Guest Pete D64]

Well I've had some fun & games including breaking grub after rebooting my machine when it hung during an attempted install of 2007.0. That was a bit worrying when the machine wouldn't boot at all but fixed it from a windows CD.

 

Anyway I've finally got 2007.1 One installed & running. I moved one of my windows data partitions onto my 2nd drive & re-installed 2007.1 so /,/usr & swap are on the primary disk which is an older Seagate 7200.7 or .8 model so probably SATA150. I put /home, /var etc onto the new drive & they work ok but for some reason it wouldn't boot from there.