Newbie Install Problems (RedHat, Mandrake, KNOPPIX)

[SeVIIen]

Don't hate me, but I am an advanced windows user. I guess I shouldn't have said that first, but those who stick around after reading that may be alittle more willing to help.

I am growing rather tired of the limitations of windows and DMC protected code. Sick of having to break laws to get free software when it's legal on linux. In any case. I have downloaded and checked several versions of Linux;
Redhat 9.0 Shrike, Mandrake 9.1, and ClusterKnoppix from LinuxCentral. the only one that works is ClusterKnoppix. With RedHat, it either freezes while detecting IEEE1394 drivers, or hangs immediately after the drivers are loaded. I have attempted to remove my IEEE1394 and soundcard and it still hangs at a blue screen, offering no message save for the white text at the bottom (F12 for next menu.) I have tried partitioning off a LinuxExt2 partition and the system still hangs. I know it is a proper copy with the md5 or whatever. I copied it from a friend. I have a similar problem with my Mandrake, in that after I chose my setup options, my caps and scroll lock lights on my keyboard blink continuously. I have let the system sit at both of these stages for what seems like hours and nothing has come of it. If anyone can offer some help my system layout is as follows.

A7N8X MoBo
2600+ Athlon XP Barton
NEC DVD+R
Master-120GB Maxtor 7200RPM
Slave-100GB Maxtor 5400RPM
(Had a 100GB WesternDigital Caviar as boot disk, but WD sucks and the replacement drives they send me keep frying.)
ATI 9700 Pro
I have a Firewire card of unknown brand and a SoundBlaster Audigy Gamer that I removed because it has the firewire onboard. It seemed Linux was having problems swallowing the idea of firewire, but upon removal, little improvement resulted.

I feel the key is that the system will boot KNOPPIX but not any installable. Keep in mind I am a newbie and I have found little documentation as to what type of drive arrangement Linux must be installed on and what the installation procedure is like; go easy on me, please. I thank you all in advance for your help.

To the lifelong endeavor of dabbling in a little bit of everything,
~SeVIIen

PS-I am running XP, seemed so basic I forgot to mention it :eek:

[dkeav]

first of all, running the latest and greatest in hardware, you really cant expect linux vendors to support it yet, secondly you might want to visit the vendors websites to check for hardware compatability, third, your bios settings may need changed, turn off things like pnp OS, fourth you may have to pass a special boot option to load or notload certain modules, in order for the kernel to boot properly, do some homework, and post some specific errors, and we will try to get you going

[SeVIIen]

See, that's my problem. I don't get far enough to get specific errors. : /
Where is there documentation on specific installation procedures?

I guess Linux might not be for me. that's dissappointing. I was hoping for a little less bogged down mucky OS. Would you reccomend any other disto's for someone a little less console and text oriented?

[dkeav]

mandrake 9.1 can be ran almost entirely from X you can almost never see the command line if you dont want to, it has pretty good hardware support, and is painless to install,

to install, of course search the forums because it has been covered in great length, but for the short version

create some free space on your harddrive preferrably as much as you can spare <5gb if you can the more the better, just make it free space it doesnt have to be partitioned before installing, download the mdk isos and burn them, boot the first one, if it doesnt boot sucessfully report the errors that it spits out, and we will get you fixed up, go through the install, it will install in the free space, the install is painless, and very wizard based, you wont have a problem with it, set it all up and enjoy

[SeVIIen]

Once again. I have done all those things. With those dual 100+GB HDDs, I have mucho free space. But when I install Mandrake, the keyboard lights blink endlessly and nothing appears on my screen. I am using DVI-I out on a Hitachi CML174B 60Hz and I have tried lo and hi resolutions, noprobe, mem=1024M, and most of the other options. They all give me blank screen with no text and blinking keyboard lights. any idea what that means exactly? I want to figure out if that is my problem and if blinking keyboard lights is telling me the error, though it seems unlikely.

[xeerex]

Linux newbie here---but hey we gotta stick together.

I'm playing with Knoppix (not the cluster version) and have problems on 1 pc with my new nVidia card. If I use the cheat code xmodule=nv then it boots fine.

I'd suspect that your problem is related to video somehow. Does knoppix recognize your card? If so, does it recognize it properly or as what?

Also, do you have another cd-rom besides the DVD+R? That may be the problem.

[dkeav]

ok thats what i needed, when that happens, the your system is getting a "kernel panic", basically its stumbled across something and doesnt know what to do ie "panic" so it just freezes, this usually happens when it runs into hardware it doenst know what to do with, in this case since your not seing anything on your monitor, it may be your video card, secondly are you using raid? last does mdk even support the barton processor? these are all things you need to look up before you ever try to install, the good news is you may only need to pass some boot options at boot time, the bad news is you may have to wait for more support for your hardware

[SeVIIen]

I am not using RAID, but I am using a secondary PROMISE EIDE controller. I am fairly confident I have tried it without, but I will make sure that doesn't work (that sounds odd, haha.) So Linux even has to wait for support on processors? Wow. That's really amazing. I wanted to try linux because I love to learn new things, and that is a really surprising thing. I guess I would be getting ahead of myself by asking what this 'X' is that I see talked about all over the board, but it seems like some kind of GUI? Where can I get that? Well I guess that's a concern for after I get mdk installed, huh? Thanks for your help, I'll try removing my IDE and wait for your response.

[dkeav]

x is the windowing system that provides a graphical desktop to linux, so its not just command line, i think you need to do some more homework before, almost all distros of linux come with X right out of the box, since most computers can support it, your distro may not support promise controlers, try seaching the forums, and www.google.com/linux for barton errors, and promise controller errors

[AlexPlank]

Mandrake recognizes my card as 9700 and I dont have any problems.

[freakmn]

Originally posted by dkeav
does mdk even support the barton processor?

As long as the processer is x86 compatible (which a Barton is), any linux distro should work (saving that the kernel is compiled with a higher version than the processor, i.e. running a 586 kernel on a 386). Again, not a problem, since I believe that mandrake is compiled with a 586 kernel, and the Barton is much higher. Also, the Barton is built on an athlon base, which has been around for many years, The only way that his specific processor would matter is if he was compiling a source-based distro (not for newbies), and wanted to use processor specific optimizations.

[freakmn]

Also, on a driver issue, the NForce Chipset drivers are avaliable on NVIDIA's Website (http://www.nvidia.com/content/drivers/drivers.asp).

There is a thread on another forum (http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/showthread.php?threadid=62465) with another person with nearly the same setup as you that seems to have Linux working.

[SeVIIen]

Attempted install without SoundBlaster Audigy and Promis IDE. No luck. Also attempted install of RedHat. Same old problem with that too; detects firewire driver and then hangs with CD light blinking. Unless anyone else has any ideas I am just going to give up on installing it on this box and install it on my second box with my A7V333 and 2200+, on board sound and 100GB WD. In any case, thanks for all the help