Why after 5 hours will Red Hat 9 still not finish installing?
 

I wanted to try out Linux, so I got a cheap Pentium II 450mhz PC, with 256Meg of RAM, and a 10 gig hard drive. This exceeds the system requirements for Red Hat, so I thought it would install just fine.
I gave up after hours and hours of trying to install it. I even tried it in text mode with mem=256, yet it would literally take half an hour to move from one screen to the next. I had to leave the room , do something else and come back at every step. What gives? Is there another version of Linux I need to be using?

Thanks in advance for your kind help.

bfair

how about trying another distribution ?? I suggest you try Knoppix, check out the forum http://www.knoppix.net and main site http://www.knoppix.com
this Linux is based on Debian, and runs from CD without even writing to HDD, but you can install it on the hdd, after issuing the command :
knx-hdinstall
as a root in console.
its only 1 CD nothing more ! I am very happy with it and I guess you will, just stick arround with the forum site and to learn more about it:
http://www.knoppix.net/docs/
good luck :D

Did you turn off things like Plug 'n Play in the BIOS? Have you searched online for other things or BIOS options to change?

Thanks!

My BIOS has very few settings. There is none for plug and play. The BIOS page says copyright 1998 if that helps. I tried another distribution "College Linux" and it fits on a single CD. After it said "Uncompressing Linux... Ok, booting the Kernel" I checked back in 45 minutes and nothing happened. It took about 30 minutes in Red Hat.
I understand less than half of what I read about Linux, but I have read about Kernels being "optimized" for Pentium IV's and Athalons. Could it be that I need to find an old version that is optimized for a Pentium II? I have no current Linux environment to recompile it myself.

Maybe flash(update) the bios??
I hope that mem= command is in Mb, not Kb or god forbid, bytes ;)

Actually I think this might be something like faulty ram. Is it new ram, is it brand stuff or cheap?

128MB of the RAM was already in the PC, I bought another 128MB. It looked generic. I will see if I can find a BIOS update. I tried it without the mem= and got the same result.

update...
 

I just downloaded a distribution called "Knoppix Lite" which is only 207MB large. It booted and I was running it in less than a minute. It ran at a normal speed with no problems. What is different? Is it just the size? What am I missing here?

What filesystem did you use for the partitions when you tried to install the other distros?

The moral of the story...
 

I didn't even get to the point where it asked about partitions with the other installs, and I don't know what was on the hard drive to begin with.

The problem is now fixed. Here is what I did:

I flash updated the BIOS to the latest available version. (There's one new skill I learned)

I had someone run some diagnostics on both RAM and the hard drive and a problem was found with the hard drive

I replaced the hard drive with a new one, which I knew was completely blank

After that, Red Hat 9 loaded quickly, and actually runs faster than Windows.

The moral of the story is: Make sure your hardware is in good order before attempting to install any operating system, especially Linux. Also, working with Linux may take more time and effort than installing the latest cookie cutter version of Windows, but In the end, you will be wiser for it.