"Install Related Question" related to Mandrake, RedHat, possibly many other things

[beonopsontgut]

Essentially a continuation:
Sure, I'll give this one more shot. As I said, the errors were generic. They were always the same "error." You will not blame me if I didn't write down the exact way that the Mandrake installer listed the errors from 2-3 years ago, but they always go something like this:
"There was an error installing package (package) do you want to continue anyway?"
"Yes 0"
"No 0"
"OK"
Is that a good description of a generic error? I don't know what else to say, other than that error happened on different packages, sometimes the same ones, sometimes different ones. Oh, yeah, and it happened between 20 and a hundred times depending on how many packages I attempted to install. It may have happened to every one! I can't tell, because the generic errors were not listed next to the packages in one big list!

And finally, my one question: "What should I do?"

[tcarradine]

i would guess one of the following:

1) bad cd-rom drive which is having trouble reading from the discs
2) bad hard drive which is having trouble being written to
3) bad cd media having trouble copying to the drive

also, are you saying you had this problem three years ago, or that you tried again after three years and are still having the same problem?

Tim

[beonopsontgut]

Thanks for the constructive post. It is a problem I've had three separate times, once 3 years ago, once 2 years ago, and once about a day ago. Is there any way to be sure that the data is transferred correctly? To make sure the iso was downloaded right, to make sure the cd is right, or to make sure the hard drive is... otherwise not broken? Basically, can I narrow down any of those choices?

[tcarradine]

although not the fastest way to check the first thing i would do would be to try booting from a live cd. if you dont already have one try DSL

at only 50MB it would probably be the quickest download. This would serve to test the CD-Rom drive read ability and also the CD burners writing. if it works you probably have hard drive problems. if it doesn't work it could still be either of those problems so...

other than that you would have to start switching out hardware to see... starting with the CD-Rom drive (cheapest to replace if you dont have one around the house)...

hope this helps!

Tim

[soulestream]

1.if this is a computer that you are only going to have mandrake on, did you allow the installer to "erase all partitions" or something like that(sorry havent used drake in a long time) or are you doing the partitioning. Im wondering if you had the same errors on different machines if your not partitioning it wrong.

2. When you burn the cd/dvd are you burning it as fast as possible. Some people have stated before they had better luck burning at slower speeds.

3. Fingerprints. You would be amazed what a dirty cd/dvd will do


soule

[je_fro]

If you're just installing RPM's, there's no way for RPM to do "dependence checking". That's why there are "dependence resolution tools" like apt-get and yum and (I think) urpmi. Mandrake has urpmi and if you do something like "urpmi xchat" it should fetch all the deps for xchat along with xchat itself.
Sounds like that's what's happening, to me.

[je_fro]

oh, this is during the initial install?

[beonopsontgut]

I tried DSLinux... and I want linux so bad now. It's just cooler. But its so confusing! How am I supposed to know what "urpmi" or "apt-get" or "yum" are? They don't even sound like abbreviations of english. Even "dependence resolution tools" makes little sense to me. But anyway, to answer all questions- DSL Linux ran fine, although I'm not sure if there was an error or anything wrong on the text boot up screen. But then, I've only tried it on the CD-RW Drive as of yet- I'll try to boot DSL on the DVD-Rom drive next. I hope its not the hard drive.

soulestream -I know I tried to partition it myself at least two of the times. I just did a swap space and the rest as ummmm... ext3... I can't remember what its supposed to be called. I think I did auto-partition the first time. I'm only burning CDs and DVDs at 4X, so I didn't think speed was a problem, and I don't think fingerprints are a problem, because on the DVD, I took it out of the original spindle, into the DVD+RW, then into the DVD-ROM. The other ones could have had fingerprints, but that one doesn't.

je_fro - your post totaly confounded me. Yes, its during the initial install.


Edit: I've always been paranoid about buying a full linux distro with documentation and all just because I feared I'd have these same problems. Might buying a distro increase my chances of success, and if so, which one?

[je_fro]

you can buy one if you want...the only difference is you'll be talking on the phone to somebody else besides us

[Parcival]

I tried DSLinux... and I want linux so bad now. It's just cooler. But its so confusing! How am I supposed to know what "urpmi" or "apt-get" or "yum" are? They don't even sound like abbreviations of english.

They are (software) package managers from three different distros, so no wonder it's confusing.

But anyway, to answer all questions- DSL Linux ran fine, although I'm not sure if there was an error or anything wrong on the text boot up screen.

Now that's good news. The next thing I would check in your situation is (a) that the downloaded Linux software has been downloaded correctly and (b) that the CD has been written correctly onto a CD.

To check wether it has been downloaded correctly. Have a quick look at this Swiss SuSE Mirror site. At the bottom you see the iso file which is being burnt onto the CD, but there are also MD5SUMS files that store the checksums of these files. When the downloaded file passes the checksum test, you know the file is unflawd.

This is how you check the file integrity with GPG

This is a quick howto on how to check it with the MD5 tool

The documentation of your distro may also say more on checking file integrity. When you google a bit, you'll find howtos for checking md5 sums in Windows if needed.

If the integrity of your downloaded file is positively verified, you need to verify it again after you have burnt it to the CD. Check your burning program to see if this option is being supported. If it is, the burning programs makes a checksum for the file on the harddisk and the CD and compares the two. If that check has been passed positively, too, you know your installation media is good as if it directly came from Mandriva itself.

Edit: I've always been paranoid about buying a full linux distro with documentation and all just because I feared I'd have these same problems. Might buying a distro increase my chances of success, and if so, which one?

No, buying a distro won't help much in your situation as je_fro said. I suggest you try to verify the file integrity as explained above and give it a try again. If it fails, too, I suggest you try to get a hold onto another harddrive and check how the installation performs with that. Also make sure to use the latest Mandriva software.

[soulestream]

I've always been paranoid about buying a full linux distro with documentation

I agree about not buying a distro to get it to work. Now you should buy/support the distro you end up using, beacuse it keeps them alive and bandwidth available on their download site.

You should however be able to download one with the same results. Do the MD5 check as parcival suggested. If you are on a bad/slow connection or using certain download managers, this may be the problem.

My other suggestion is try Ubuntu. One CD. Simple and easy to use. I have installed it several times now on people just starting outs machines, with great success. Plus you get apt-get which will allow you to install software much more easily.

soule