Hi There,

Lately, I have been trying to install Linux on a home PC, and run into some problems. When I attempt to install Mandrake 9.1, I can get through all of the package installation, but then the system hangs when it comes time to choose a bootloader. With Knoppix, I can bring it up from CD and get to the point of installing packages to the hard drive. Then errors will come up concerning the installation of packages, such as:

cloop:error -3 uncompressing block 16343 68536/5644/34527/0 393320683-393355210
end_request: I/O error, dev f0:00 (cloop) sector 2098404

This corresponded to the package /usr/bin/mysql_waitpid

Other packages/sectors run into similar problems, such as /usr/share/doc/bison/

Then I see an array of hexadecimal addresses print to the screen, followed by

code: f0 fe 49 04 0f .....
<0> kernel panic: Aiee, killing interrupt handler!
In interrupt handler-not syncing

And then it all hangs....

I thought it might have been the iso's or CDs...but I have used images from both linuxiso.org and mirrors from the distribution web pages, and have also used both CDs from a cheap rebate stack and expensive memorex CDs.

I am able to install either RH 7 or Mandrake 7 with no difficulties, but they only install 950-1000 MB of packages, so I though maybe they're not getting to the bad sectors yet.

I have had to power on/off repeatedly during these attempts, and think that some of the sectors of the hard drive are now corrupted. I am guessing that I can just download a DOS bootdisk with something like the scandisk utility to look for and possibly fix disk errors.

Other suggestions?

Thanks for your help.

if your hard drive is screwed up, i don't know what to tell you. i think you know that a bad hard drive is just bad. i've never used mandrake, but i've heard that it's easy and very compatible. what's in your computer? if you have some obscure parts they may not be supported (i went through that with a sound card i had. it's better to just get more commom parts because they will be better supported). i didn't know you could install knoppix, i thought it was only for the live cd, but i guess not. i think it's debian based. i've tried knoppix before just to see how well it worked and i was impressed by it's hardware recognition and compatibility but it seemed to run a little slow. i was still impressed though. the installation may be a new feature (i've never heard of it) so it may not be at a stable development stage. when i started on linux i first used Red Hat. it was an easy install but i quickly grew out of it and graduated to slackware. i would reccomend slackware to anyone. it doesn't have some of the problems i've heard that red hat has (i experienced a few of the more minor problems myself). i've tried more than a couple distros and slack suited me best (i liked it even more than debian). so i hope that i helped. did i go off topic? i'll read your post again and edit anything else i want to say back in.

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yes, using a DOS bootdisk with scandisk would be a good idea. however, you said that mandrake finished installing packages so the file system (i think) isn't a DOS FAT anymore. in case you don't know what fs's (file systems) are, it's pretty much the system that your OS uses to manage files (hence, file system). DOS uses an fs called FAT (File Allocation Table) while Linux will (usually) use ext2 (or ext3 if you like journaling. you can also use reiserfs but the last time i updated my kernel support for that was still beta.). so the DOS scandisk won't work on a linux hard drive. fortunately, linux has a similar command. fsck (stands for file system check). so you can boot knoppix, get an xterm open, and use the "fsck" command on your hard drive (i hope you know how linux hard drive addressing works. if it's the master drive on the primary ide channel it will be "/dev/hda". slave to that drive will be "/dev/hdb". so if it's /dev/hda your command will be "fsck /dev/hda"). whew, hope i helped (and didn't make any spelling or grammitical errors.)

Thanks,

I just wanted to know if, from what I've posted, someone could say right off the back..."yeah, your hard drive is beginning to fail...it is hardware and not software"....or if it's something that can possibly be fixed with a utility which can be run from a floppy. I can easily get a new computer...but I wanted to know what else to try first.

I think I could reinstall RH 7 or MDK 7 and simply install newer packages as I need them.

yeah, try fsck then see what condition your drive is in. if it's bad then replace it (i hate to see people buy entirely new pc's when one component fails. and then they throw out the - usually still good - old pc). red hat and mandrake are both good for beginners, but make sure that you don't stay there forever. i had a pc class in high school last year and the teacher used red hat solely on his linux pc. he stayed at the beginning user level and had been using RH linux since version 4 or something. i started using linux halfway through that year and i was shocked to find out towards the end that he had never booted his computer into runlevel 3 (you don't know what that is yet) and did not know at all how to use the command line (not even in an xterm). i'm not saying that have to be a linux genius, just that to use it you'll have to know more than RH will make you think you should.

Thanks...I have been using linux for about 6 years now, though I only do what I need to get by (no run level 3's). Red Hat has treated me very well...but every once in awhile...I like to try something new. RH 9 was pretty slow compared to RH 7, and for some reason OpenOffice was broken, so I decided to experiment with Mandrake (optimized for i586 as opposed to i386), or Knoppix (the undiscovered country of Debian...ooooh!), just for the heck of it.

Does fsck have sector fixing capabilities, similar to scandisk?

If I could just get back to having RH 9 working again, I would count myself lucky, and just reinstall rpms for whatever was broken.

As I said previously, I could even handle reverting to RH 7, and then again just install updated packages as I need them (no internet connection for this guy (no phone line in home!)...stand alone workstation, shuttling ascii files to/from school on a floppy ) I can burn CDs to bring updated packages to it.

Have a friend who is a little more computer savvy than me (in terms os networking, recompiling kernels, etc.). He quickly vowed never to deviate from RH again. Mandrake was too buggy for him (this was awhile ago), and he simply, ominously said, "Don't go near Debian"...without further explanation

Thanks again for all your help.

never leaving RH? hmmm... doesn't sound like a good idea to me, but whatever floats your boat. i don't actually know if fsck can fix your drive or if it just checks it (i never had that problem). as for not using debian... understandable . lol. some people swear by it. i tried it and didn't like it. i swear by slack. if you're that commited to RH, it's not enitirely bad anyway. so keep on using it. hope you can get around your problems.