cant install Any Linux - Page 2

~~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.

ap90033 · Mar 14, 2007, 07:33 AM

What can you do with a Gigabyte P965-DS3 Rev 2.0? It has teh ICH8 and Jmicron chipset. I have tried with AHCI and without and insmoded the jmicron and generic ide. I can get the install done but when it reboots to setup the users and finish the install it sits there and hangs...

ap90033 · Mar 14, 2007, 07:34 AM

I have tried Open Suse 10.2 and 10.3 alpha 1 and Fedora Core 6. None work...

DarkFoss · Mar 14, 2007, 05:08 PM

Why don't you give Mandriva's 2007.0 One Metisse a spin.. it's a live cd and it has the jmicron patched kernel as well as the proprietary graphics drivers. It's a Gnome desktop
though .. There are other public mirrors you can find it at as well if that mirror is too slow.
They just released a One cd 2007.1 Rc1 with Kde i586 and another with Gnome that is x86_64 . The 2007.1 Spring Final release is a month away. I'm downloading them now but it will be a little while until I try to boot from them so I don't know how stable they are yet I did not try the beta.

ap90033 · Mar 16, 2007, 12:14 PM

I have tried the Live cd for Suse and it works as well but what good is that? I would really like to have Linux installed on my system. I figured this would be a lot easier. Can anyone help me with getting this installed please? I am sure with all the Linux Guru's out there this should be a piece of cake.

H3X4D3C1M4L · Mar 17, 2007, 09:32 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ap90033

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.

Think about this: Windoze gets all the vendors writing drivers for it. Linux doesn't in 99% of the cases I've seen, it has to be written by users... someone who doesn't know the hardware as well as say, the people who made it?

Besides I can get RAID to work on an ICH8 even without resorting to using software RAID. What you need is dmraid (http://www.linuxmanpages.com/man8/dmraid.8.php).

That will also work for AHCI I believe, it works for Matrix RAID under Knoppix 5.11.x (or at least that's all I've tried it on).