Red Hat 9 installation issues
 

Hi ,

Been trying to install Red Hat Linux version 9, over 7 times now. Not too sure how i need to partition the drives (two drives from two manufacturers). Once the entire installation process is completed it gives me a: system disk error. Once I do a boot, it goes into grub mode but does not accept any commands. What do I do. Please help.

Thanks in advance for your help on this.

Hi,

Not sure I'll be able to help but if you post some more information, maybe someone else will.

What disk error did you get? Were you able to make a rescue disk during the installation? Does grub just ignore anything you type, or is the whole system frozen?

John

Any chance you can let RH9 installer do the partitioning for you? I think this is an option during installation of 9.

Hi John,
Thank you for responding. Here is the exact error that I get when my machine restarts after installation:
Non-System disk or disk error
replace and strike any key when ready

At this point, I switch of the computer (restart does not work as the system still displays the same disk error) and switch it back on and then I get the non-responsive Grub prompt.
Grub does not let me type in anything as such the entire system is frozen, no matter how many times, I've tried installing it.
Trying the rescue bit (from teh CD) with the chroot \mnt\sysimage does absolutely nothing for me as I get back the same non-responsive GRUB prompt. I can't make a boot disk as I do not have access to the floppy disk :(.

I did let the installer automatically partition the disk for me. I still face the same issue :(

Hi,

What CD's are you using? Downloads from RedHat? Something else?

Are you installing onto a blank slate? I.e. is there anything else on the computer already, like MS-windows?

Does the installation seem to go through without any errors? What questions does it ask you and what answers do you give?

Two simple questions, I'm sorry if these insult you - I just want to get them out of the way.

Are there any floppies in the drive when you restart?
Is "\mnt\sysimage" a typo? Did you try "/mnt/sysimage"?

I'm a bit confused as to how restart brings you to the system disk error, but switching on and off bring you to grub. Am I missing something?

Maybe the answers to the above questions will bring us a bit further along. As I say, I may not be able to solve this for you, but anyone who can will need as much information as possible.

John

Tell us more about your machine! The devil is in the details!

Dude - if you're getting a non-system disk error at boot, are you sure you don't have a floppy in there? Seriously, here's what I would suggest, and let me be clear I am assuming that you don't mind starting over from square one. First, figure out what kind of partitioning scheme you want to use. Get your fave partitioning tool, I suggest either BootIT NG from terabyte, or the Linux utility cfdisk. Drop all your existing partitions, and create new ones the way you want. NOTE: This will effectively kill all data on your PC - as I said before I am assuming you want to start completely over. After you have created your partitions, verify that your RH disks are valid by running MD5SUM's on them. If checksums match, you're in good shape, if not, your ISO's are corrupt. Once you've got usable CD's, and your partitions are set up the way you want, you are ready to start the installation process, but first verify that your BIOS boot sequence looks at the CD before the hard drive. Assuming it does, fire it up and follow the RH installation instructions. When you get to the point where it asks about partitions, hey, you've already got them defined so you should be golden. Complete the install, and all should be cool. Remove the CD's before you reboot.

Now, as far as partitioning schemes go, it's like religion and politics; everyone's got their own opinion, and everyone is sure their opinion is correct. With RH, you technically only need 2 partitions, the swap partition and the / (root) partition. If you've got puny memory (64Mg or less) then make your swap partition 128 Mg, otherwise make it 256 Mg. Note: once upon a time the rule was "make swap = twice RAM" but these days, where 256Mg or even 1G RAM is common, that guideline no longer really applies, and allocating that much space to swap is just squandering your drive's capacity. As for the / partition, by default RH will install everything in it. That's perfectly fine, but if you want a little more control over how your disk space is used, you can create the other partitions explicitly. Here are my suggestions at partioning schemes, and note, *everybody* has their own opinions as to what is "best". I suggest you go with what *YOU* think is best, not what anyone else says (this post included).

Minimal: swap = 256 Mg, / = remainder of the drive
One step up: swap = 256 Mg, /usr = 20% of the drive, / = remainder of drive
Better: swap = 256 Mg, /usr = 20%, /home = 25%, / = remainder
Best: swap = 256 Mg, /boot = 100 Mg, /tmp = 5%, /usr = 20%, /home = 25%, / = remainder

Hopefully that should give you a working installation. Good luck with it. -- J.W.

Let's not have a successful operation and kill the patient on this one. We don't have enough information to give a reasonable solution to the problem.

If the windows partition was retained and Red Hat's partition tool was used, there is the necessary partitions present. What I have gleaned from the available information is that we are dealing with a situation where Red Hat needs to be reinstalled and the user needs to pay particular attention to which hard drive and partition that RH is being installed.

I would suggest that we are dealing with wrong bios settings on the system. I personally see no reason to kill the machine and completely start over. It would be good practice for a newby to go through the install process again.

The prime problem here is that we do not have adequate information about the user's machine and how the hard drives are configured. The only way that we could possibly help the user work through the problem with the information that we have is to recommend a user's manual!

If the user submits detailed information about the machine and its drives/partitions, there are a number of us who could offer solutions. Absent the machine information, we would be offering only a best guess solution. To Offer this solution to a newby is one sure way to insure that they throw up their hands in frustration and reach for their MS system disk again.

We need more information!