Guest amaarse Posted November 5, 2002 Report Share Posted November 5, 2002 I have this funny problem where the installation process hangs during the stage where the packages are transferred to the hard drive, apparently at random positions in the transfer process. The transfer stops, the HDD/IDE light on the PC case stays on, but the mouse pointer still moves. Installation stops here - I have to switch off or reset the PC. It doesn't matter if I try to install from CD or from harddisk. I also tried to set some stuff in the BIOS to lower settings for this HDD, like DMA/PIO mode and block transfer, but nothing helps. "Linuuxe Mandraque" 8.1 and RedHat 7.2 install flawlessly, so I am quite puzzled. The hardware isn't that exotic: Asus TUSL2-C socket 370 MoBo with Intel 815 EP chipset, UDMA 100 interface; Celeron 1.0 Ghz; 448 MB RAM; Maxtor 91536U6, 15 GB "AV-grade" hard disk on primary slave, that I am trying to install to, in EXT3 or ReiserFS partitions, that doesn't matter either. Anyone an idea? (please) Albert Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ixthusdan Posted November 5, 2002 Report Share Posted November 5, 2002 Did you burn a cd or did you buy a box set? This problem usually is seen with a bad burn or a bad checksum. In other words, the data is not recorded correctly or the download is corrupt. I'm not real big on setting the bios to slower positions unless you have a new board with the latest ram and a piece of hardware from the last century(!!) Are you sure you have enough room on your installation partitions? I guess I need some more details. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest amaarse Posted November 6, 2002 Report Share Posted November 6, 2002 I try to install the 9.0 download edition, from home-burnt CD's indeed. So, my first guess was a bad CD too. My first try was to re-burn the first disk on another type of CD, and at slower speed. This didn't make any difference. To exclude bad CD reading as the source of the problem, I copied all files from the CD's on another (FAT32-) partition, made a boot floppy from "hd.img" from the "images"-directory of the first CD, booted from that and tried to install again, this time from hard disk. Ergo, the CD reading is out of the way completely. If there was an error in a file from the CD, installation should hang at the same position every time -- it doesn't. Copying packages still stops at different posisitons, up to about a quarter of the data transfer. So, would you suggest that there are random reading errors from the hard disk as well? I can hardly imagine that. It looks like the IDE interface locks up during the data transfer, as the HDD light remains on when the copying has halted. Maybe there exists anything like a kernel parameter that I should pass during boot up that would change how IDE interfaces are handled? The hard disks in my system are from '99 (UDMA 66 - 2MB buffer, fairly modern equipment I would say); the main board and processor are from last year; RAM is 100 MHz SDRAM, which fits the 100 MHz FSB of the 1 GHz Celeron. I created a 4 GB root partition, and selected some 2 GB of packages, so that should fit easily. Installation even hangs around or before 1/4, so when less than .5 GB is copied. Ergo, space is not the issue either. Hard disk related BIOS settings are back at "auto" or "maximum" as it didn't help to change them. At least I wanted to give it a try. Albert Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ixthusdan Posted November 6, 2002 Report Share Posted November 6, 2002 Just in case, do a checksum on the iso image of cd1. I would think it would stop at the same spot every time, but from the description you are giving of the problem, I have encountered bad downloads or bad burns. That doesn't mean it can't be something else. Interesting, there are more problems of this type with the release of 9.0, but then I haven't been trying to help for that long either. I had a disk problem with 9.0, but it was the 2nd cd that I had to replace. It showed up as weird problems when I ran the system. (I do not always do checksums, which would have really saved me a hassle!) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest amaarse Posted November 7, 2002 Report Share Posted November 7, 2002 Sorry, the ISO images were put on CD and erased. Worse: the download was done for me by a friend who has ADSL (I don't). So I can't do checksums anymore. Still, regarding the seeming randomness of the moment of locking up and the HDD light remaining on, my gut feeling is that it is something between the 9.0 installer and the IDE controller (Intel 82801BA Ultra ATA controller of the 815EP chipset) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ixthusdan Posted November 7, 2002 Report Share Posted November 7, 2002 If I were a gambler, I would bet on a bad download. I have dsl, and still have to do a checksum in order to verify the file. Is it possible for your friend to get another set of all three iso images? If the iso was bad, then whether you load from a cd or the hard drive, you are still working with a bad file. Which type of install do you do? I always do expert in order to erase everything but my /home directory. I do not think the installer is all that much different, but I could be wrong. There are some arguments that can be passed to the kernel at load time, but since I have never had to do that, I am not at all familiar with those arguments. Sorry, I still think the obvious is the best course of action, in this case, a bad iso file. On your idea about a controller conflict: a lot happens with the setup prior to actually installing the system. I would expect an issue like that to manifest prior to the build part of the process. But this is all just guessing. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Counterspy Posted November 8, 2002 Report Share Posted November 8, 2002 If your friend is still willing, I would ask him to do it again and run the md5sums right after the burn so you know you are getting good cd's. Here is a site to get the sums for Windows: ftp://ftp.e-smith.net/pub/e-smith/contrib...DOSWindowsApps/. You might want to go over this how-to for extra advice: http://www.e-smith.org/docs/howto/CD_burni...ning_howto.php3 . Counterspy Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Ender Posted November 8, 2002 Report Share Posted November 8, 2002 I had this same problem when I was installing it on a friends computer. It turned out to be some hard drive issue that I was unable to track down. He had another hdd in the comp at the time and we switched to that, and the install ran perfectly. What type of hdd to have? I think my freinds one (that didn't work) was Maxtor ATE 100 20gig or something similar, and can't remember what his second one was. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest amaarse Posted November 8, 2002 Report Share Posted November 8, 2002 After reading this, I figured: this could be an issue between the 9.0 installer and Maxtor harddisks. Let's try something else, virtually turn the disk into a less specific type of harddisk. So I went back into the BIOS, turned UDMA access OFF for this harddisk, and guess what: installation of 2 GB of packages went without any problem! (sometimes it's good to be a little bit stubborn...) So, I found a real bug here. There is an issue between MDK and Maxtor! Either Mandrake or Maxtor has to do some fixing. I haven't tested running the system with UDMA back on yet. Time to go to bed. Albert Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest en2ec Posted November 8, 2002 Report Share Posted November 8, 2002 I have been experiencing the same problem -- 9.0 hangs at random times during package installation -- and I'm glad to find that I am not the only one. I thought I was going crazy. I downloaded the ISOs and burned them, tried to install them and the installation would hang. I then went back to check the md5sums and they were OK (didn't know about them before this problem). I burned new CDs at 8x and tried installing again. Same problem. I also have Mandrake 8.3, which installs without a problem, and I get the same problem when I install 9.0 whether I wipe out 8.3 or I first install 8.3 and merely update to 9.0. My experience is different from amaarse in that I have a Western Digital hard drive, not a Maxtor. But I will try turning off UDMA access. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Ender Posted November 8, 2002 Report Share Posted November 8, 2002 As far as I know amaarse you should be able to turn UDMA back on with out any problems, but have no personal experince with it. If it doesnt work just switch it back! :D Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest amaarse Posted November 9, 2002 Report Share Posted November 9, 2002 After the successful install, I have turned UDMA back on. The system boots OK, but spooky stuff seems to happen upon disk writing. Not everything that is cached is really written to the harddrive. So, after I installed my USB modem, logged out & in, /dev/modem was gone! grr. I think this is a serious thing. Of course I can turn off UDMA, but I don't buy a Mercedes to only be able to drive it in first gear :x It is a Mandrake 9.0 issue, not a problem of my system. Even MICROSOFT's WINDOWS 98 SE (yeah) runs perfectly stable! :lol: How/where should I report this BUG? BTW, I saw another topic, on 9.0 ruining partitions, that may be related: http://www.mandrakeusers.org/viewtopic.php?t=894 en2ec: what type of motherboard / chipset does your system have? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ixthusdan Posted November 9, 2002 Report Share Posted November 9, 2002 Curios. I am running two Maxtor hard drives in my system, along with a cdrw and cdrom. I have not experienced the same problems. I have: Epox main board with VIA KT133 chipset Athlon 1G Processor @200MHz fsb 256MB sdram @ 133MHz bus Nvidia Gforce2 gts with 32MB generic NIC Creative Labs hardware modem Creative Labs SB Live I believe that Mandrake is written with Intel in mind, so I would expect a problem with VIA rather than Intel. If you have an extra ide cable, I would try switching it out, as long as it does not cost you anything. (It is true that win98se with all of the repairs was reasonably stable, but you still had to reboot every 24 hrs!) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bvc Posted November 9, 2002 Report Share Posted November 9, 2002 I have a Maxtor and the Intel 82801AA 810 ATA controller and have udma4 in 9.0 where in 8.1 I could only get udma2. Check and see if you have some of these modules loaded after boot , as root with lsmod They are for the Intel 82801. In 8.1 they were not loaded after install and I learned of them when learning to compile the kernel, and they increased my performance. In 9.0 they were loaded after install but not when I compiled the kernel so I have to put them in /etc/modules, as seen below. If the kernel does need them it just won't load them, so after reboot do lsmod again and see what/ if any are loaded. ###I2OSUPPORT i2o_core i2o_config i2o_block i2o_proc ###I2C i2c-algo-bit i2c-algo-pcf i2c-dev i2c-i801 i2c-i810 (YOU DON'T NEED THIS ONE) i2c-proc 12c-core i810_rng rtc Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest amaarse Posted November 10, 2002 Report Share Posted November 10, 2002 Thanks! This is the type of info I was really looking for. All modules are loaded except (indeed) i2c-i810 and i810-nrg, although most are listed as "not used". Does that matter? The system also SEEMS to work normal now, at least the last few hours I haven't seen anything strange. Thanks again (and all others for their postings as well) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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