Ubuntu

Many different problems while installing

Asked by Matpen

Hi everybody,

I'm a GNU/Linux newbie and I'm having some problems intalling a distro on my machine.

I'll try ti briefly explain what happens:
1) I downloaded and burned many different distros and checked the md5:
- Fedora 9
- Ubuntu 8.4.1
- Zenwalk 5.2
- Puppy Linux 4.1
- Deli Linux 0.8.0
- Slax 6.0.7

2) Where available, I tested the LiveCD on a AsusTek Laptop with Pentium 4 2.66GHz 480MB RAM, which works fine

3) The goal would be to install on at least one of following older machines (further hardware infos available if needed):
a) Pentium II 300 Mhz 128MB RAM 10GB HDD Award BIOS 1997
b) Celeron 1100 Mhz 128MB RAM 8,4GB HDD Award BIOS 2001

4) I'm experiencing all the possible problems:
- Fedora, Ubuntu: Install freezes at different stages, sometimes sooner sometimes later, sometimes after "checking hlt instruction..." (doesnt display OK yet), sometimes whith a "kernel panic" and a stack trace
- Zenwalk, Deli: almost always during install a "kernel panic" and a stack trace
- Puppy and Slax: Could manage to use the LiveCD and get to the DE, with Puppy even to use some Apps, but after a short while everything freezes, or I get a "panic"

5) I tryed following solutions
- Formatting and partitioning the HDD in different ways with different fs (xfs, ext2, ext3, even FAT) and trying to install WIN95 (which works) or set up a dedicated HDD
- Using text mode, which works (just with LiveCDs 'cause installs never get to end), but often I dont even get through kernel loading
- Passing all possible boot parameters: nohlt, noapic, apci=off among them
- Suggested by some forums, I opened both machines and switched RAM between them and between slots, even tryed to use them together to 256MB (WIN95 works - and the Celeron used to work even with WIN XP and 128MB before). Also tryed to use different CD drives, or one HDD in the other machine, or used both machines with just CD, or just CD and HDD
- Noticed one lucky time where I got through with Puppy, that the free mem indicator displayed "836MB free", so thought to try with boot option mem=128M, but this stops the loading even sooner
- Tryed BIOS with different options (example HDD with "LDA" or "Normal")
- Tryed to boot from USB, but this seems not to be possible on both machines

Being a Linux newbie, I like the idea of a free OS, but I have no idea anymore on how this could happen with 2 different machines and so many different distros, and how to solve the problem.

Any help would be appreciated. Thanks in advance!

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Matpen
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Matpen (matpen) said : 		#1

there are news: somehow (dont really know how, i didnt change anything especial) i got through the install with zenwalk. however, it stopped again during booting, showing that the problem was not a bad cd.

what I could read on screen is:

md: autorun done
RAMDISK: couldnt find valid RAM disk image starting at 0
UDF-FS: No VRS found
XFS mounting filesystem sda1
VFS: Mounted root (xfs filesystem) readonly
Freeing unused kernel memory: 252k freed
INIT: version 2.86 Booting

then it freezed. of course, being a newbie, this doesnt mean anything to me. So I just tryed to add RAM from the other machine, coming to 256MB. This time I could login, and starting using Zenwalk. But...everything I start stops shortly later and the app's window suddently closes. I tryed many times, my guess is that there are problems in the kernel's memory management system.

I wrote down some errors I get during installation with other distros, maybe it can help finding out what it is about. Mainly 'cause it could serve as a bug fix. I believe it could happen to other newbies, and anybody else would have given up long time ago saying that "Linux is just for experts, pity".

Zenwalk
--------
RAMDISK: Compressed image found at block 0
RAMDISK: Incomplete write (-28 != 3276 4194394
invalid compressed format (err=2)
VFS: Cannot open root device "null" or unknown-block(0,0)
Please append a correct "root=" boot option; here are the available partitions
0100 4096 ram0 (driver=?)
0800 10005408 sda driver: sd
0801 8787523 sda1
0802 1212907 sda2
0b00 1048575 sr0 driver: sr
Kernel panic - not syncing: VFS: Unable to mount root fs on unknown-block(0,0)

Puppy
------
boot:
Loading vmlinuz..................
Loading initrd.gz......................ready

Unlzmaing Linux..........done
Booting the kernel
Kernel panic - not syncing: junk in compressed archive

(note that I get this with 2 different install-CDs)

Fedora
--------
Modules linked in: nls_ISO8859_1 fan thermal button processori2c_i801 uhci_hcd
Pid: 0, comm: swapper Not tainted (2, 6, 25, 4 #1)
---here a stack trace with many numbers---
kernel panic - not syncing: Fatal exception in interrupt

Slax
-----
---here a stack trace with many numbers---
kernel panic - not syncing: Attempted to kill init!

Zenwalk (other try)
-------------------
---here a stack trace with a list of drivers---
kernel panic - not syncing: Unable to mount root fs on unknown-block(253,0)

Zenwalk (again - and others too)
--------------------------------
Checking "hlt" instruction...

Sorry for the long post. I hope it can be useful for the community somehow. I even took pix if somebody requests them...

thanx for any help!!

Revision history for this message
Matpen (matpen) said : 		#2

allright, no help. I tryed many distros, LFS and older ones as well, no one is working. looks like linux still needs some time to be ready for the public.

Revision history for this message
Matpen (matpen) said : 		#3