cant install Any Linux

p4paji · Jan 30, 2007, 11:48 AM

hey guyz, i'm one very frustrated newbie to linux. I've myself installed Suse 10.1 ,10.2 on many machines bu cant install on my own....i'm giving my configuration

Intel 945 GNT Motherboard
Pentium D 2.66 G Processor
nVidia 7300LE card
1Gb RAM DDR2 533MHz

Now the problem with all the linux i've tried is SATA problem from fedora to RedHat to Ubuntu and many others as well..but Suse was the one i've found which is simple and solves SATA problem...

But on my side Suse (all versions) simply hangs on first reboot showing some error relating to udev deamon and printing the stack trace....

Sometimes freezes after
agpgart: 7983 Stolen MEMORY Detected
[Freeze]

Sometimes(when i boot from DVD-->boot installed system) freeze after
Starting udevd
[freezes]
[No stack trace this time]

Theres no problem with normal installation and installation is always successful

reading many replies on other threads i saw these problems

1) AHCI enable : I found no option for the same on my BIOS
2) APIC disable : I've tried this but installation doesn't proceed after loading kernel
3) MD5 Check : Checked several times always same result

Now could someone please suggest some solution please..I'll be thankful

PangingJr · Jan 31, 2007, 04:06 AM

as i recall i did not experience any problem installing Linuxes on Intel 945G/ICH7 chipsets motherboard + SATA hard drive.

i haven't checked into your motherboard specs, however, unless your motherboard is using ICH7R (which also included SATA RAID) and you are running a Windows/linux dual boot and also want to use AHCI SATA mode in Windows.
then, otherwise, i have suspected that your motherboard uses ICH7 (with no SATA RAID included in the chip) as part of its chipsets. anyway, try loading BIOS default settings... you can leave SATA mode settings alone there should not be any problem with the default settings. also, you may want to try running memtest on your system to verify the system conditions, and also unplug all USB devices before running the Linux OS setup. see if one these helps.

anyway, this is another story, as for people who has a 'CD/DVD not found' problem when trying to install openSUSE 10.2 on the Intel P965 (may be include G965/Q965) + ICH8R (+ JMicron) based motherboard that has no native PATA support, and instead using the JMicron chip for its PATA controller, and while your hard drive(s) are using ports of the ICH8R and your PATA DVD drives is under the port of the JMicron chip...

the workaround for this problem which myself have suceesfully tested it out is to set in the BIOS for the JMicron controller to be in AHCI mode, and at the very first phase of the setup add "insmod=pata_jmicron' to the boot options.

and as for your info, this problem is not exist in the latest release of Fedora Core 6.

~~DudeBoyz~~ · Jan 31, 2007, 05:09 AM

Mandrake Linux work ok? It might work to help prep the drive, and then you can wipe out the data on the drive (don't nuke the whole partition, just get rid of the data) and try installing Suse where Mandrake (Mandriva - stupid name change, by the way) was and see if that works?

PangingJr · Jan 31, 2007, 05:22 AM

what are you talking about? DudeBoyz.

~~DudeBoyz~~ · Jan 31, 2007, 05:51 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by PangingJr

what are you talking about? DudeBoyz.

That wasn't clear enough?

Suse has had issues properly setting up the main and swap partitions, but if you use another distro to prep the drives with the Linux files sytem, swap file, etc. some of these issues are avoided.

You do frequent Usenet, right?

PangingJr · Jan 31, 2007, 06:12 AM

hmm. i don't think so DudeBoyz, that are not the issue. read my above post for the main areas that actually cause the problem under openSUSE (Goldmaster media that has kernel 2.6.18.2-34 on it) and the said motherboard chipsets and its configuration.

~~DudeBoyz~~ · Jan 31, 2007, 06:23 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by PangingJr

hmm. i don't think so DudeBoyz, that are not the issue. read my above post for the main areas that actually cause the problem under openSUSE (Goldmaster media that has kernel 2.6.18.2-34 on it) and the said motherboard chipsets and its configuration.

Gee, it seems to be an issue for folks discussing it on Usenet...

Just because you personally have no knowledge of it doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

Regardless, was just trying to help. He's free to disregard the information if he wishes.

PangingJr · Jan 31, 2007, 06:40 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by DudeBoyz

Gee, it seems to be an issue for folks discussing it on Usenet...

Just because you personally have no knowledge of it doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

Regardless, was just trying to help. He's free to disregard the information if he wishes.

LOL, there are 2 motherboard chipsets (Intel 945 and Intel 965) on my above post. that was why i asked you what are you talking about?

which Intel chipset are you talking about when you said this "Gee, it seems to be an issue for folks discussing it on Usenet..."?

which case problem that your were refering to when you said this "Mandrake Linux work ok? It might work to help prep the drive, and then you can wipe out the data on the drive (don't nuke the whole partition, just get rid of the data) and try installing Suse where Mandrake (Mandriva - stupid name change, by the way) was and see if that works?"

was that for my openSUSE case problem?

is that about my openSUSE case problem that you said "folks discussing it on Usenet"? if so, show me that Usenet dissusions.

now, when you post this below message...

were you try to help p4paji with his problem?
or, you were trying to help me with my openSUSE problem that i have already found a workaround for it.

Quote:

Originally Posted by DudeBoyz

Mandrake Linux work ok? It might work to help prep the drive, and then you can wipe out the data on the drive (don't nuke the whole partition, just get rid of the data) and try installing Suse where Mandrake (Mandriva - stupid name change, by the way) was and see if that works?

Gee.

p4paji · Jan 31, 2007, 08:09 AM

Well guyzzz I dont think the problem is with partition but will still try cause i can access the drive as well during installation.....well in -->view system configuration and then save configuration and i can save the configuration...it seems the problem is something else as we can't figure out....i performed Firmware test and results were failed for many in OpenSuse10.2 Such as EDD Support: Failed and 4 more failed.....If you want i can give the whole firmware results if its of some help....but really is this the compatibility problem or just some linux head banging stuff which linux is really famous for....
hey guys i'm frustrated ...I'll try Mandrick as well

~~DudeBoyz~~ · Jan 31, 2007, 08:22 AM

It is possible that suse is having hardware problems and as a result there is data corruption caused by the formatting, partitioning or write errors, meaning the install will fail.

Some users have found that if they use a different distro to format, partition and setup the swap space, they are then able to install suse if they opt to leave the drives and partitions in place.

So, suggesting a different distro, such as Mandrake, may help. If it is able to properly setup all the drives and partitions, etc. and runs without errors or corruption, it is possible to delete the installation, keep the drives / partitions in tact and perhaps suse will install and run fine.

p4paji · Jan 31, 2007, 08:23 AM

Hey PagingJr this is the link for my motherborad configuration and really speaking i'm unware of these ICH7-8 so guys this is the link and tell me what is the problem i'm facing

http://www.intel.com/products/chipsets/945g/index.htm

p4paji · Jan 31, 2007, 08:25 AM

Ok guys trying mandrake distro
in hope it'll help

PangingJr · Jan 31, 2007, 08:50 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by p4paji

Now the problem with all the linux i've tried is SATA problem from fedora to RedHat to Ubuntu and many others as well..but Suse was the one i've found which is simple and solves SATA problem...

p4paji,

explain the problem that you said you had with SATA on the other distros but you did not find it when you tried openSUSE?

p4paji · Jan 31, 2007, 11:18 AM

hey man I tried
Rh9 and failed...No boot some no hard disk found error
Fedora4..failed same error
Fedora6...Don't know what happened with it...No display for me after first screen...some stacktrace message as i insert DVD and boot frm it....
OpenSuse 10.0...No hard disk
OpenSuse 10.1...Installed but freezed...but i ended up booting my system somehow but without users setup and no gui ..so i cant login or move into another runlevel(i booted from DVD)

As i still dont think the problem is due to partitons as i have Xp on my system and i created partitons from it as well and failed...
So i'm trying knoppix now to know whats boot parameter for my system....Still was someones's suggestion
But i wanna know this can be done using Ubuntu as well.....

PangingJr · Jan 31, 2007, 11:42 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by p4paji

hey man I tried
Rh9 and failed...No boot some no hard disk found error
Fedora4..failed same error
Fedora6...Don't know what happened with it...No display for me after first screen...some stacktrace message as i insert DVD and boot frm it....
OpenSuse 10.0...No hard disk
OpenSuse 10.1...Installed but freezed...but i ended up booting my system somehow but without users setup and no gui ..so i cant login or move into another runlevel(i booted from DVD)

As i still dont think the problem is due to partitons as i have Xp on my system and i created partitons from it as well and failed...
So i'm trying knoppix now to know whats boot parameter for my system....Still was someones's suggestion
But i wanna know this can be done using Ubuntu as well.....

hmm it might help me to help you better if you can give more detail than shorter ones like that.
i just don't have a magic solution for you right now till i understand or have more clue on what is going on at least.

~~DudeBoyz~~ · Jan 31, 2007, 11:54 AM

Too bad you don't have an extra IDE drive around that you could install and use as the boot drive then add the SATA later.

PangingJr · Jan 31, 2007, 12:43 PM

all i know for sure is the Intel ICH7 and SATA was out quite some time before the Linux kernel's that are used by the Linux distros you mentioned you have tried them. hmm but again i just don't test all ICH7 based platforms and all SATA drives in the world yet lol.

p4paji · Feb 1, 2007, 11:04 AM

The motherboard i hav just allows 2 parallel ATA wiht master-slave architecture so no option of me buying "older technology" PATA drive to install linux when my Xp works fine....Now actaully i wanna know how come Windows work fine ...what does this bloody windows have?????
And i'm really sorry for short error messages because i borrowed the DVD/CD of various distros from my friends so i dont have the same now.....latest one i tried was Suse so i posted error which i got from it....i know no magic wand is available that would help but still i appreciate the way you have helped me out
...but could you give me more details when i said that firmware tests failed on many options in Suse
i think that'll help me more than retrying rejected distros again

~~DudeBoyz~~ · Feb 1, 2007, 12:11 PM

If you can get your hands on an IDE drive, I would still highly recommend trying it.

SATA is still not an established and universally supported interface.

IDE drives can be found cheap in most places. You can go to a PC Recycle type store and buy a 20 gig hard drive. You only need a drive big enough to install your distro to.

Have you updated your motherboard to the latest BIOS, by the way?

Diagnosing can be a tedious process, but in general I have the best luck with Isolating things. If the SATA interface appears to be problematic, take it out of the equation if only for the testing phase. Then take it step by step, advance one item at a time, until you find the root cause.

IDE is much more universally supported and established, that is why I'm recommending it to help diagnose.

It should not hurt your system in any way to temporarily disable the SATA interface and try an IDE install, and it could help you save HOURS of time.

I hope that sounds reasonable to you.

PangingJr · Feb 1, 2007, 05:47 PM

i still don't have a solution for you. however, this is for your info, as you mentioned before you couldn't find AHCI setting in your BIOS? and as i said earlier on my very first post that i suspected that... because AHCI mode is only exist on ICH7R, so i think your motherboard is using ICH7 as its south bridge chip. the SATA drive(s) that is connected to SATA port(s) that is controlled by ICH7 will only be in IDE mode, anyway, i'm sure nevertheless, that Fedora Core 5/6 (default kernel) can be installed on SATA that is under either Intel 945G/ICH7 or 945G/ICH7R chipset-based motherboards, and the SATA mode can be set to either IDE or AHCI or RAID.

i like to have more clue than this, where i now have none. i might have some, but some of the secret info regarding the SATA problems with other Linux distros builds need to be revealed first.
check out DudeBoyz's solution if you can. and post back.

DarkFoss · Feb 1, 2007, 08:08 PM

Mandriva will also fail the default kernel is not patched for the jmicron chipset. It is patched into one of the newer ones. Panging's workaround is the same one recommended by Mandriva.

http://qa.mandriva.com/twiki/bin/vie..._controller_no

PangingJr · Feb 2, 2007, 08:28 AM

this is not apply to your motherboard platform and your case problems. i'm sorry i don't mean to hijack your thread, p4paji.

however, since i started this... in which i thought many people are having interest in openSUSE 10.2 and some may use the same motherboard platform as mine.
a friend of mine who also just started to use the Intel **P965/G965 + ICH8R + JMicron** chipset-based motherboard just like myself had found the problems and forwarded this below quoted message to me i just located the link to add to it.
so anyway just to be sure that you (means anyone who read this) understand... this below info is only apply to the specific platform, on which the workaround was found and fixed the specific installation problems.

the workaround i posted above is/was based on this...

Quote:

SysAdmin1138 Events: openSUSE 10.2 on the ASUS P5B Deluxe - http://myweb.facstaff.wwu.edu/~riede...5b-deluxe.html

This board in general is not a good Linux board. It was purchased with Windows in mind. Which in the end turned out to be something of a negative, as three of the five people who got them wanted a Linux-something installed. Two of us have gotten it working, and the third may come around once I'm done dorking with my setup.

There are two big areas that cause problems with this board:

1. The chipset, Intel 965G, has no native PATA support so ASUS attached a JMicron PATA controller. The JMicron PATA controllers are broken in all but the newest kernels (2.6.18 or newer). There is a limp-mode for 2.6.16 and older that can work (google all-generic-ide). This is a b-i-g problem when you consider almost all Optical drives are still PATA.
2. The kernel included with the Goldmaster media (2.6.18.2-34) locks up the install hard. The cause of which is, as of this writing, unknown. This will probably change when they remaster the install media later on.

There are some BIOS settings that need to be set in order to make the system usable on Linux. Because there are functionally two separate IDE controllers on the board, there are two separate places in BIOS you need to go to in order to configure your IDE environment. This board has the option of RAID, but it is actually a software RAID and is not well supported in Linux yet. I didn't use it.

On the MAIN page in BIOS there is a sub-menu for IDE Configuration. You want to set 'Configure SATA as' to IDE. Don't use ACHI, so far only Vista can use ACHI right there. Linux will eventually support it. (and if you're reading this article two years from now, Linux probably has figured it out. Google harder.)

The second setting is on the ADVANCED menu, in the OnBoard Devices Configuration sub-menu. Set 'JMicron Controller Mode' to ACHI. That's right, ACHI. Not IDE. This allows the PATA optical devices to be detectable. This looks counter intuitive, but this is what seems to work.

Now that you've done that, you have put the shiny DVD into the optical drive and booted from it. You hit 'install from DVD' on the front screen, and.... it bombs, unable to detect the media.

That's because 10.2 isn't quite smart enough yet to detect it. You can force the issue by putting the following line on the "Boot Options" line on the front screen:

insmod=pata_jmicron

This tells the kernel to force-load the JMICRON driver. This allows the kernel to locate the DVD drive with which it'll continue the installation process.

Now comes the harder problem, the kernel shipped with 10.2 Goldmaster will hard lock the P5B. There is a work-around which you can find in Bug 229365.

1. When the install gets to the 'now we will reboot your machine', click SKIP.
2. [Control]+[Alt]+[F5] to get to a shell
3. cd to /mnt/etc/
4. vi modprobe.conf.local
5. Append this text to the file "blacklist intel_agp"
6. Save the file
7. Reboot

That SHOULD get you in.

p4paji · Feb 3, 2007, 11:29 AM

Guys, huhhhhh, found the problem after hours and hours of googling....PCIe card nVidia 7300......someone with similar hardware had the same problem and suggested to update the display driver.....
Actually when i booted with failsafe mode and added option "nolapic" to it it gave a new error and a real long one....it was too fast for me to see the errors so i'm posting the last lines....

on first try it gave ->
Stack trace messages.......then
INIT : id '1' respawning too fast; disbaled for 5 mins
INIT : id '2' respawning too fast; disbaled for 5 mins
INIT : id '3' respawning too fast; disbaled for 5 mins
INIT : id '4' respawning too fast; disbaled for 5 mins
INIT : id '5' respawning too fast; disbaled for 5 mins
[And for the first time...no freezing of the system]

On subsequent tries ->
Stack Trace Messages and then
EIP: [<c0110579>] smp_apic_timer_interrupt + some id again

and i saw the errors regarding this issue and found this happens when u have the wrong display card selected....
Now guys i wanna know how to update the driver when systems not booting ...pls help on this one

PangingJr · Feb 3, 2007, 03:21 PM

try checking out "install/boot" forums at suseforums.net/ and forums.suselinuxsupport.de/

ap90033 · Mar 14, 2007, 07:15 AM

Uh SATA has been out for a while now. Why would someone want to buy older slower technology? When you buy a PC it becomes obsolete fast enough.
I can get crappy Windows XP or Vista to work with my P965-DS3 Mboard so I am missing the reason why so far no version of linux works. Geez this sucks. Spend good money on equipment and of course I have to run Windows as my primary OS because Linux is STILL not up to par with hardware or software... and very few games work as well... sigh.