It Just Won't Install

[JSimmons]

I wanted to install Ubuntu 6.06 on my system, after a MONTH of trying to get Linux installed, nothing I've tried has worked. If you're thinking you want to comment or try to help, please read the entire contents of this message so we don't have to re-hash...


System Specs:

ASRock 939Dual Sata2 motherboard with 2.10 BIOS
AMD64 4200X2 Winchester (not overclocked)
2GB (4x512) Patriot PC3200 RAM (not overclocked)
eVGA 7900GTX (not the overclocked one, and not overclocked by me) (brand new)
hda=new Seagate 200gb EIDE (brand new)
hdb=80gb Western Digital EIDE
sda=SATA1 160gb Western Digital
sdb=SATA1 160gb Western Digital
cda=LITE-ON CD/DVD writer (brand new)
keyboard and mouse are PS/2
19-inch LCD monitor with native resolution of 1280x1024.


Relevant Motherboard BIOS Settings:

1) Onboard NIC and onboard Sound components are enabled.

2) Raid is disabled.

3) SATA2 controller is set to "IDE " and is disabled in BIOS.

4) SATA1 is set to "IDE".

5) USB Legacy Support is disabled.


Other Notes:

1) I'm NOT dual booting. I'm using removable boot drives so that I don't accidently eliminate my ability to use Win2K .

2) I'm using the entire hard drive (hda) to install Linux.


Observations:

1) Windows 2000 Pro runs flawlessly on this box.

2) The Ubuntu 6.06 live cd boots up fine (even sees the NIC and sound components). In fact, ALL of the Live CD's seem to bootup just fine.

3) I've tried ALL of the available install ISOs from Ubuntu, burned onto CDs at varyng speeds onto various brands of media.

4) Every distro that I tried with their live CD correctly detected every piece of hardware in the box, even the SATA drives.


Other distros I tried:

Ubuntu 5.10 (would not install)
Knoppix (would not install)
Fedora Core 5 (Installed but would not boot)
Suse 10.1 (would not install)
Debian (would not install)
Mandriva 2007 beta (would not install)


Things I Tried While Trying to Installing Ubuntu

1) Physically disconnecting the SATA drives

2) Disconnecting all USB devices

3) Turning off legacy USB and USB 2.0 support in the BIOS

4) Burning the distro CD at speeds from 8x to 48x

5) Burning to different brands of writable media

6) Installing the amd64 version of the distro

7) Non-graphical installers

8) Installing other distros (including older versions of Ubuntu).


Other Hardware Things I've Tried

1) Replacing the CPU (I had one laying around).

2) Replaced the motherboard (same motherboard brand/model, just "newly purchased" in case the m/b was flakey).

3) Tried a different hard drive to install onto.

4) Using just 1 stick of RAM

5) Using just 2 sticks of RAM


Final Comments:

The guys over at Phoronix.net successfully installed linux onto a system with the same motherboard, and I've heard other people have too, but despite everything I've tried, my system rejects any install of Linux. I've tried everyting ecxcept change the brand/type of motherboard (you know, with a different chipset). I wanted to avoid that because I didn't want to have to reinstall Windows - again.

[je_fro]

What do you mean it's "rejected"? Is hda detected? Does the install cd fail to write to the drive? Linux should run like a champ on that box...what errors are you facing? You might want to make sure "Plug and Play OS" is OFF in the BIOS. That causes odd things to happen.

[JSimmons]

Any Live cd you might care to mention sees all my hardware. Every install process I've gone through sees the hd, partitions it, and formats it. Every install (except one) has failed to complete, and the one that did complete refused to boot. I've swapped out hardware, and I've tried six different distros, and nothing works. That's what I mean by "rejected".

I've listed most of the things I tried (that I can remember trying), and no, I stopped writing down precise install problems after the 7th or 8th install attempt.

I don't recall if "Plug-nPlay OS" is enabled or disabled, but if I have to change it from its current setting, that's simply not acceptable if it will affect my ability to run Windows. I don't want to replace Windows, I want to explore Linux without jeopardizing my ability to run Windows (hence the two separate boot drives).

I simply don't understand why this machin refuses to accept a Linux install, especially since all the Live CDs I've tried have booted fine.

[rameyd]

Is the install failing?
Does the installer crash?
When you attempt to load post it errors?

You indicated loading to an alternate drive, How are you trying to boot the install? Grub on MBR, Boot Floppy, USB Stick, Swapping Drives?

We need to know what your machine does when it "rejects" linux.

[je_fro]

How does the installer bail out? What errors does it throw?
(sheesh this is like pulling teeth...)

[saikee]

I got the feeling the installation went OK in the terminal mode and failed in the GUI mode if the selected distros couldn't match the high-end eVGA 7900GTX graphic card with the avilable generic drivers. As the display was not working the line of communication broke down and gave an impression the installation failed.

I would try a cheaper or more common graphic card first to get a LInux installed and then swap back the video card to test a few drivers until one works.

[JSimmons]

Is the install failing?
Does the installer crash?
When you attempt to load post it errors?

You indicated loading to an alternate drive, How are you trying to boot the install? Grub on MBR, Boot Floppy, USB Stick, Swapping Drives?

We need to know what your machine does when it "rejects" linux.

The installers just hang up at various points. The Ubuntu installer is the most interesting, because I can try back-to-back installs, and it will freeze up at different places. I stopped writing this crap down after several failed install attempts. I sat for over 20 hours on the Ubuntu IRC channel with people suggesting various things. I don't remember the specifics about any of the other installers because so many of them froze up during the process. The last distro I tried to install (yesterday) was Mandriva 2007, and it froze with 10 seconds left during the "installation" phase. I didn't write down where it was when it froze (if you can't tell, this whole this pisses me off juuuuuuust a little).

And for everyone that doesn't appear to get it, when I say "rejects Linux", I mean that figuratively, like when a patients body rejects a transplanted organ (I can't believe I had to explain that).

[JSimmons]

How does the installer bail out? What errors does it throw?
(sheesh this is like pulling teeth...)

It doesn't "bail out". "Bailing out" would imply a graceful degradation in functionality or an outright error message being generated, or even something akin to a BSOD.

All except one of them just *FROZE UP*...
(sheesh, how many times do I have to say that?)

[je_fro]

(sheesh, how many times do I have to say that?)

You never said it at all....

I think Plug and Play is On in your BIOS...you should turn it off...if not, bad hardware (RAM) is usually the culprit with random errors.

Anyway, good luck with all your problems.

[JSimmons]

I got the feeling the installation went OK in the terminal mode and failed in the GUI mode if the selected distros couldn't match the high-end eVGA 7900GTX graphic card with the avilable generic drivers. As the display was not working the line of communication broke down and gave an impression the installation failed.

I would try a cheaper or more common graphic card first to get a LInux installed and then swap back the video card to test a few drivers until one works.

When every Live CD I've tried boots and *sees all my hardware just fine*, why would I want to do that? When I say "froze up", that's exactly what I mean. The mouse, the keyboard - everything - the hard drive light is usually steady on as well (depends on the distro and the installer).

Pardon me if I appear to be a bit short with everyone, but I'm annoyed that I have new moderately decent hardware, and everyone's telling me to unplug everything. If that's what it takes to install Linux on this box, I guess I won't be installing Linux on this box.

[saikee]

I have done over 100 different installations and do not share your view on the installation difficulty of Linux.

Like I said your high-end video card may be too new for Linux which generally uses generic drivers selected by the installer. If an installer fails to match your video you lose the line of communication and everything seems freeze up but in fact it may not.

In your situation pressing ctrl+alt+backspace can often drop you back into the terminal mode and many users can proceed to alter the driver in the xorg configuration file /etc/X11/xorg.conf.

Linux works satisfactorily for established hardware. If you have newer equipment then you will have to find the drivers yourself or wait for the new release. However in the installation of over 100 distros over 4 to 5 PCs I never had a need to find a single driver outside the supplied set.

The mismatch of video driver is fairly common but within the standard set of generic drivers there should be one or two that will work.

I do not run a dual core PC but all the distros you had tried have been successfully installed in various machines in my case.

I have removed several hard disks full of installed Linux from one machine and force-fed into another newly assembled PC, resulting none of them work because the mismatch of the video. One by one I could kick start everyone of them with the method I described above.

[Icarus]

When every Live CD I've tried boots and *sees all my hardware just fine*, why would I want to do that? When I say "froze up", that's exactly what I mean. The mouse, the keyboard - everything - the hard drive light is usually steady on as well (depends on the distro and the installer).

Pardon me if I appear to be a bit short with everyone, but I'm annoyed that I have new moderately decent hardware, and everyone's telling me to unplug everything. If that's what it takes to install Linux on this box, I guess I won't be installing Linux on this box.

That's that spirt! Blame everyone else for trying to help

Random hangups during install at various points tells me bad memory. I'd run memtest (it's on the install CD disk 1) and let that run for a while.
Also I've had odd problems with a faulty motherboard which made it look like it was bad memory.

Bad hardware does a lot of funky things that can't be explained (and Windows is really good at ignoring 'minor' hardware glitches so it 'appears; to be running fine).
I'd run the system through a battery of tests, I've found Ultimate Boot CD to have every test you'll need...helped me find my bad motherboard problem when everything else was pointing towards memory.

And it's not the video card, it's supported (if using a newish distro) and even NVClock supports overclocking with it

[whk]

ACPI is enabled by default in BIOS and there isn´t an option to disable it.
A workaround: Press F1 on first screen, which brings you straight to a command line page with a prompt. Just type in: linux nolapic noapic acpi=off

All hardware are designed with Windows in mind. Every year or two theres a new challenge to make Linux run like a champ. However, to keep your wits about you logically I would test one or maybe two distros. Thats my $ 0.02. Patients is my key.

These moderators and experts above are very very good. They would help you to the max. I would heed them at will. Just my opinion.

good luck

[enshum]

"2) The Ubuntu 6.06 live cd boots up fine (even sees the NIC and sound components). In fact, ALL of the Live CD's seem to bootup just fine." This seems to indicate the problem might be with the hardrive or hard drive/tray combo the tray might not be seated correctly or the hard drive is not quite seated correctly in the tray. this can happen I use slide trays myself. When you use the ubuntu live cd do you click on the install now icon in the upper left hand corner of the screen or are you using another cd for the install? Does the live cd see your hard drive at boot up remember that the live cd runs from ram not the hard drive.

ed