Hi,

I had a Pentium III 500 Mhz machine running Fedora Core 3. Everything was working fine, and I could get into Gnome or KDE, but it was really slow. So I upgraded big time.

I bought a PG5DC Deluxe motherboard (775 socket type), bought a 3.6 Ghz processor, 512 Mb of DDR ram, a new Video Card (Diamond Viper X600 Pro, which is a PCI Express x16 card). I installed everything in a new case that I bought and then added the hard drive, cdrw drive, floppy drive and wireless card from my old machine.

I then tried to boot up the machine, and went through the bios. After it was done it loaded the initial part up just fine, but when I get to the Login screen, and type in my userid and password, it locks up after that if I try to go into Gnome, KDE, XFCE, etc... I can get in the emergency terminal session, but only 1/4 of it shows on the screen and it is very, very slow to refresh so I keep messing up whatever I type.

I know this processor uses hyperthreading, and I know I have to recompile my kernel. I can't get out to get new versions of anything, I am typing this from a backup laptop. How do I recompile my existing kernel so everything works again? I am a complete newbie, and tried to look for how to do it but kept finding instructions for other distros, and most of those dealt with upgrading a kernel version. I had 2.6 and was fine with it, I just want to recompile it.

Help!!!

Thanks,
David Hamilton

Most that I have come across,recompile the kernel with the old machine,
then move everything to the new one.Before you do that since you have the
new one working,boot up a live cd that works good on your machine and
see what is loaded.Print out or post;
andthat will give you an idea what to use when you make menuconfig
Another thing to try is to put in another hard drive and slave the one you want to keep
and install fedora on it and copy that kernel to the slave drive,and add it to grub and hope for the best.

Hi,
I still don't know how to recompile my kernel, at all. I'm a new linux user. Any help with how to recompile would be greatly appreciated. And how would it help to recompile on the old machine, that was working fine? The new machine is very different now, isn't that what I need to recompile on?

When I installed Fedora Core 3, I told it to install everything, so it installed like 4 Gb of stuff on my hard drive.

I don't have a second hard drive, just this one, and don't really want to spend any more money than I just did.

Please help, I'm a dumb newbie!

I found somewhere I could use use ctrl+alt+f1 to get to terminal login and then logged in as myself.

I then ran
lsmod:

Module,Size,Used by
radeon
parport_pc
lp
parport
autofs4
i2c_dev
i2c_core
ipt_REJECT
ipt_state
ip_conntrack
iptable_filter
ip_tables
button
battery
ac
md5
ipv6
ohci1394
ieee1394
uhci_hcd
ehci_hcd
ndiswrapper
floppy
ata_piix
libata
scsi_mod
dm_snapshot
dm_zero
dm_mirror
ext3
jbd
dm_mod

I then ran dmesg and tried to type it all, but didn't want to spend the rest of the day typing after doing many pages. is there something specific I should be looking for????? It just went on and on and on and on and on...

dmesg:
009fc00 (usable)
BIOS-e820: <bunch of numbers> (reserved)
BIOS-e820: <more numbers> (reserved)
BIOS-e820: <more numbers> (usable)
BIOS-e820: <more numbers> (ACPI data)
BIOS-e820: <more numbers> (ACPI NVS)
BIOS-e820: <more numbers> (reserved)
BIOS-e820: <more numbers> (reserved)
0MB HIGHMEM available
511MB LOWMEM available
zapping low mappings
On node 0 totalpages: 130992
DMA zone: 4096 pages, LIFO batch:1
Normal zone: 126896 pages, LIFO batch: 16
HighMem zone: 0 pages, LIFO batch: 1
DMI 2.3 present
ACPI: RSDP (v000 ACPIAM....
ACPI: RSDT (v001 A M I OEMRSDT ...
ACPI: FADT (v001 A M I OEMFACP ...
ACPI: MADT (v001 A M I OEMAPIC ...
ACPI: OEMB (v001 A M I AMI_OEM ...
ACPI: MCFG (v001 A M I OEMMCFG ...
ACPI: DSDT (v001 A0045 A0045001 ...
ACPI: PM-Timer IO Port: 0x808
Built 1 zonelists
Kernel command line: ro root=/dev/VolGroup00/LogVol00 rhgb quiet
mapped 4G/4G trampoline to ffff4000.
Initializing CPU#0
CPU 0 irqstacks, hard=023d5000 soft=023d4000
PID hash table entries: 2048 (order: 11, 32768 byes)
Detected 3614.051 MHz processor
Using tsc for high-res timesource
Console: colour VGA+ 80x25
Dentry cache hash table entries: 131072 (order: 7, 524288 bytes)
Inode-cache hash table entries: 65536 (order: 6, 262144 bytes)
Memory: 514248k/523968k available (2068k kernel code, 9120k reserved, 647k data,
144k init, 0k highmem)
Calibrating delay loop... 7127.04 BogoMIPS (lpj=3563520)
Security Scaffold v1.0.0 initialized
SELinux: Initializing.
SELinux: Starting in permissive mode
There is already a security framework initialized, register_security failed.
selinux_register_security: Registering secondary module capability
Capability LSM initialized as secondary
Mount-cache hash table entries: 512 (order: 0, 4096 bytes)
CPU: After generic identify, caps: bfebfbff <bunch of 0s>
CPU: After vendor identify, caps: bfebfbff <bunch of 0s>
monitor/mwait feature present.
using mwait in idle threads.
CPU: Trace cache: 12k uops, L1 D cache: 16k
CPU: L2 cache: 1024K
CPU: After all inits, caps: bfebf3ff <bunch of 0s>
Intel machine check architecture supported.
Intel machine check reporting enabled on CPU#0.
CPUO: Intel P4/Xeon Extended MCE MSRs (12) available
CPU: Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4 CPU 3.60GHz stepping 01
Enabling fast FPU save and restore... done.
Enabling unmasked SIMD FPU exception support... done.
Checking 'hlt' instruction... OK.
ACPI: IRQ9 SCI: Edge set to Level Trigger.
checking if image is initramfs... it is
Freeing initrd memory: 948k freed
NET: Registered protocol family 16
PCI: PCI BIOS revision 2.10 entry at 0xf0031, last bus=4
PCI: Using MMCONFIG
mtrr: v2.0 (20020519)
ACPI: Subsystem revision 20040816
ACPI: Interpreter enabled
ACPI: Using PIC for interrupt routing
ACPI: PCI Root Bridge [PCI0] (00:00)
PCI: Probing PCI hardware (bus 00)
PCI: Ignoring BAR0-3 of IDE controller 0000:00:1f.1
PCI Transparent bridge - 0000:00:1e.0
ACPI: PCI Interrupt routing Table [\_SB_.PCI0._PRT]
ACPI: PCI Interrupt routing Table [\_SB_.PCI0.POP1._PRT]
ACPI: PCI Interrupt routing Table [\_SB_.PCI0.POP3._PRT]
ACPI: PCI Interrupt routing Table [\_SB_.PCI0.POP4._PRT]
ACPI: PCI Interrupt routing Table [\_SB_.PCI0.POP5._PRT]
ACPI: PCI Interrupt Link [LNKA] (IRQs 3 4 5 6 7 10 *11 12 14 15)
ACPI: PCI Interrupt Link [LNKA] (IRQs 3 4 5 6 7 10 *11 12 14 15)
ACPI: PCI Interrupt Link [LNKA] (IRQs *3 4 5 6 7 10 11 12 14 15)
ACPI: PCI Interrupt Link [LNKA] (IRQs 3 4 *5 6 7 10 11 12 14 15)
ACPI: PCI Interrupt Link [LNKA] (IRQs 3 4 5 6 7 10 11 12 14 15) *0, disabled.
ACPI: PCI Interrupt Link [LNKA] (IRQs 3 4 5 6 7 10 *11 12 14 15)
ACPI: PCI Interrupt Link [LNKA] (IRQs 3 4 5 6 7 10 11 12 14 15) *0, disabled.
ACPI: PCI Interrupt Link [LNKA] (IRQs 3 4 *5 6 7 10 *11 12 14 15)
Linux Plug and Play Support v0.97 (c) Adam Belay
usbcore: registered new driver usbfs
usbcore: registered new driver hub
PCI: Using ACPI for IRQ routing
ACPI: PCI Interrupt Link [LNKA] enabled at IRQ 11
ACPI: PCI interrupt 0000:00:01.0[A] -> GSI 11 (level, low) -> IRQ 11
<tons of stuff like above line, I can't handle typing all of this stuff>
apm: BIOS version 1.2 Flags 0x03 (Driver version 1.16ac)
apm: overridden by ACPI.
audit: initializing netlink socket (disabled)
audit(1112594566.105:0): initialized
Total HugeTLB memory allocated, 0
VFS: Disk quotas dquot_6.5.1
Dquot-cache hash table entries: 1024 (order 0, 4096 bytes)
SELinux: Registering netfilter hooks
Initializing Cryptographic API
ksign: Installing public key data
Loading keyring
- Added public key ...
- User ID: Red Hat, Inc. (Kernel Module GPG key)
pci_hotplug: PCI Hot Plug PCI Core version: 0.5
vesafb: probe of vesafb0 failed with error -6
ACPI: Processor [CPU1] (supports C1, 8 throttling states)
isapnp: Scanning for PnP cards...
isapnp: No Plug & Play device found
Real Time Clock Driver v1.12
Linux agpgart interface v0.100 (c) Dave Jones
agpgart: Detected an Intel 915G Chipset
agpgart: Maximum main memory to use for agp memory: 439M
agpgart: AGP aperture is 256M @ 0x0
serio: i0842 AUX port at 0x60,0x64 irq 12
serio: i0842 KBD port at 0x60,0x64 irq 1
<gave up, paged through and saw at least another 10 pages of typing, I
couldn't handle it anymore>


I guess I'll wait a couple of hours, and if I don't see anything useful, I'll just put it back in the old computer, get my pictures off, and then install a fresh copy of Windows XP. I was hoping to use Linux, but if it is this hard to upgrade your PC, I'll wait a few years before I come back again.
My wife missed Windows anyway.

Why does everything have to be so hard in Linux?

I still never got WPA working on my old machine, I had to stick with WEP because it was
impossible to do after spending four full days reading every manual and online resource and
fighting with it.

Please help, I would greatly appreciate it, but I don't know how to use this information to
do anything? And I don't have a clue how to recompile

Why don't you just get your pictures off and then dual boot.Install windows then fedora.

I was trying to move to Linux only, to get away from Windows.
If I go back to Windows, I'm certainly not going to fight with Linux again until it is a lot easier to use, if it ever is.

I put my hard drive and cdrw back in my old computer, so I can get my pictures off. If anyone knows how I could recompile it so it will work in my new computer, I am happy to try.

If not, I will just format and go back to the dark side. I didn't want to give up, but I can't seem to find any useful information to help me with my problem.

Dave

Hi,
Instead of going back to the dark side, why don't you start a fresh install on your new machine ?
You know, a distro is not for ever, you can try other distros that you may even like more than
FC3.
That will not break anything..Two months after getting a box from Dell with a 3.6 Ghz HP proc,
1 Gb DDR ram dvd writer and cd player, I got rid of Bill for ever. I have installed at least 12
distros on it. Nothing broke it. I just kept Mandrake because as it is my first distro, I am sentimental,
although on another box.
Go away, try ! You took the bother to build an entire machine that proves you're efficient. Now
you just want to stick with FC3 ?

From what I understood, Fedora is the easiest to use, and is free.
I tried to research a while back about what is the best type of Linux to use, and
all I got to read about was flame wars between people who loved Mandrake, or Suze,
or RedHat, or ... I never got good information about what is the easiest version to use
(and that is free).

I am willing to try a fresh install, it just took a long time to do, plus I'll have to go through
configuring my wireless card again, which took me almost a week the first time.

But as far as different distros, I haven't a clue. And if I ask, I know what will happen because
I saw lots of flame wars all over google results from people who asked that simple question.
The other fun question is which to use, KDE or Gnome? I still don't understand the difference between the two for the same reason. People get so passionate about distros and desktops.

How do I uninstall? Or do I just put cd1 back in and tell it to install on the new machine, and have
it format and partition again from scratch?

I don't give up that easy, I'm just tired and remember how long it took the first time. Although
with a 3.6GHz machine with 512 Mb of RAM the install will probably be a lot faster now.

Thanks,
David Hamilton

Actually, if you're just looking for an easy-to-use and install version, try Simply Mepis 3.3. In my experience (I have tried 20 distros in 3 months), it is the easiest to setup and use. Since you have the info you want to save off the hard drive already, you may want to partition it (leave at least 6gb for Mepis) and install Windows, then Mepis.

To install Mepis, you just download the live cd, burn it to a cdrom, then boot it. You'll need to login as root with the password root. Then select "Install Me" when it finishes booting. It's that easy.

Mepis does a MUCH better job of detecting hardware properly than Fedora.

Help,

I put in the Fedora Core 3 Disk 1 install CD and tried to do the install, but it froze up while initially loading. Is there any way to fix this or to get it to debug what is going on?

Thanks,
Dave

I got the install to work finally, but now on initial bootup after
the install it is failing to startup, it froze completely.

Any ideas?

Oh well, bye linux! It has almost been fun!

Dave

Hi,
don't give up hamil, I'll try to offer a few helpful words, bear with me.
I built my first box many years ago, didn't really have a bloody clue what I was doing. Bought two modems as i thought that would make the net twice as fast, bloody salesman never told me any different!. Anyways, first distro I ever installed was SuSE, everything just worked, that was SuSE 6.2 and I raved about it for years. Recently tried SUSE 9.2 what a pain in the butt, useless for auto config, but it does look good *is that really a mitigating factor?* Point here is even people who swear by one distro are seldom able to steadfastly maintain that with honesty, hence NEVER ask which distro, that's your first mistake. Instead just go out and try a few legal SuSE copies if you want it cheap or free can be had from Ebay, I mean 9.2 can be had for a few pounds and the probs I had will not necessarily be experienced by you, in other words you may come back next week and rave about it *shrug*. Fedora, yes that's free, but so is the other popular new user distro Mandrake, you can download the three cd errr free version. So that's three distros to try, go on don't blinker yourself with just Fedora or you may well end up in one of those flame wars siding with fedora just because you've always used it.

Next up you built a new box, Kudos to you Can you with absolute certainty be sure it's all set correctly? Don't take this the wrong way but is everything playing ball with IRQ's etc? This should'nt be a problem but I for one find if I plug say my TV card into the third PCI slot everything goes bonkers! *boggle* Put it in the fourth and all is well. However I never found this out until I tried by chance to see if this was a prob, docs weren't much help either, so some things are neither your nor linux's fault just sloppy hardware setup. Double check drive settings etc, ie master/slave and such.

As for the advice of others, I would definately say install WINDOWS, then Linux. Dual boot really is sound sense as you always have a fall back, and of course not all windows software can be run under wine anyways. In my case I won't part with my Adobe video editing suite.

Regards Urquhartia

Take care

Here's a useful guide on how to recompile the kernel which is posted right here on LQ. Sorry to hear that you've decided to give up on Linux after less than 24 hours. Good luck with things regardless -- J.W.

Hi,
I can only put my graphics card in one slot, a PCI Express x 16 slot.
The only other card I have in the motherboard is my PCI wireless card. Sound is built in,
as is everything else I could need, just about.

I'm pretty sure my graphics card is just not supported, and is locking the system up as soon as Linux tries to use it. It is a Diamond Viper X600 Pro. It gets detected or a card similar, but I am pretty sure this is my problem. There are no AGP slots, only Express x 16 or regular slow PCI slots.
I've turned hyperthreading off and back on, it makes no difference.

I've been using FC3 for many months now on my old computer, but considering after a fresh install on the new machine that it can't even get the first start up, I can't do anything. I can go to true terminal mode, but what good does that do me? I'm a newbie who barely knows how to use Linux.

What's in my new box:
ASUS P5GDC Deluxe motherboard ,
3.6 GHz Intel processor
Cooler Master Hyper 48 CPU fan,
512 MB DDR Ram
480 W Neopower PSU (for ATX 2.03 compliance and the 24 pin power connector)
80 Gb hard drive
3.5" drive
CDRW drive
Diamond Viper X600 Pro with 256 Mb RAM
(2) 80mm cooling fans
Belkin wireless card

I was able to do a full install of FC3 no problem, it just could never start up past loading all of the modules. I've built boxes before, just not with Linux and not with really new stuff like this.

I've spent Friday through most of today (Sunday) on this, and am tired. I also still want my WPA encryption, and to be able to not broadcast my SSID on my wireless network. I know how to lock down XP fairly securely, and only use FireFox, and I know I have drivers for all of my new components, so I don't see the point continuing. Plus my MIL can get me a copy of XP Pro and Office XP Pro for free with her work, so I figure I'll give up for now and try dual-booting when things aren't so hard in Linux. I could try other distros, but since there is no resource that compares all of the Linux distros, and it is a lot of work to download the .iso files and burn them, I don't feel like trying a few flavors.

Thanks,
Dave