Mandrake 9.1 installation crash (USB, CD's or other hardware?)
 

Hello

I'm trying to create a Linux server using mandrake 9.1 but have been repeatedly unsuccessful because of crashes during installation, if anyone can offer any help or insight it would be greatly appreciated, thanks.

It seems the installation is a little more stable due to recent help (changing the first hard drive to primary master, and CD drive to secondary master - thanks to pablob and Rundi "linuxquestions.org/questions/showthread.php?s=&threadid=94781" (i don't have enough posts to include a url)

The installation gets further now but still crashes; this is what happened last time I tried to install.

I got all the way to the boot loader installation, but after I choose the boot loader options the screen hanged for a while, then it continued to the summary screen where it has now frozen. Everything I can see on the summary screen has been installed except for network/internet which has 'network not installed' highlighted in red.

Notes

* Neither my mouse or my keyboard are responding; the keyboard light is no longer on, but my optical mouse is still glowing, which means it's still getting power. My keyboard and mouse are USB, so could this be the problem?

If my mouse is still getting power then it means the USB ports are
working, so maybe it’s not USB. Could it be the keyboard that’s caused the installation to crash? I choose the US international keyboard because I live in Australia, but I’m not really sure which type it is (never thought it really mattered)

Here are some of my hardware specs

Athlon XP 2000+
Gigabyte GA-7VAXP mobo using the kt400 chipset
512 DDR 333 RAM
Geforce4 MX440

I've got a 10G Maxtor drive that’s about 3-4 years old which I’m using for my Mandrake installation (set as master), a new 80G WDJB which I use for windows (set as slave), and a 40 speed CDROM (set as secondary master)

The CD's I installed from were copied off a friend, so I’m not sure of the integrity. I know you can do a checksum on them using the iso's from the mandrake website but I’m not sure how yet.

I'm going to try to install using some mandrake 9 CD's that I got with a magazine (because I’m pretty confident there intact), & if that doesn't work then I’m going to reinstall and try a PS/2 mouse and keyboard again. I'm hoping its just faulty CD's :)

If anyone has some helpful insight they'd like to share it would be greatly appreciated. Thanks

what are your network specs? i had a similar problem w/the install. my problem was configuring x. turned out i have an old hospital grade monitor that was being recognized as a commercial grade monitor. the specs were not the same for both monitors so x was having a problem w/this. my workaround was to install w/ a diff monitor and set the spec to a generic monitor w/ the same specs as my hg monitor and all is well. coming to my point. what kind of network are you on. what is your nic...etc.?

Thanks for the reply

I've got two network devices at the moment; one is an onboard 8139 realtek chip, the other is a netgear FA311. Both are 10/100's. I had some problems with the 8139 chip before (which is partly why I bought the extra card). I'll disable it before I try again and see if it helps.

I had a go at installing with mandrake 9 and the install still crashed (it crashed heaps actually). I'm pretty sure it’s not the CD's - the ones I used came from a magazine cover. What I’m suspicious of are the USB drivers, because the mouse and keyboard keep freezing. Does Linux have any problems with USB support?

I just flashed my bios, so maybe the problems been fixed :)

did the bios flash work?

I'm not sure, I think it may have helped. It crashed again at the partition screen, but then i had another go and it went all the way.

The problem now is the mouse freezes after about 10 seconds. I installed with a PS/2 keyboard and mouse, which worked fine during the install, but now they don't want to at all - Mostly the mouse. I switched back to my USB keyboard and it seems to be working all right, but it won't let me use the usb mouse at all.

Do you think this could be an interrupt problem?

I was thinking maybe the mouse won't work because i need to change the configuration settings or something, but i can't navigate successfully using just the keyboard. I'm downloading some linux documentation so maybe i'll be able to sift through that for some answers.

The network installed properly this time (and i forgot to disable the on-board card). I was pretty impressed by the small amount of configuration required to get on the net. It went straight in, all i did was give it a static IP and the address of my gateway.

I haven't really been able to give this the time it needs, but i hope to change that. If i find out whats wrong i'll post back.

and thanks heaps for the interest! :)