oki, first time posting here, so if this has been answered before
i apologize.

my problem is that i am unable to install linux om my computer.
I have tried red hat 8.0 mandrake 9.0 and redmond.
on both red hat and mandrake i experienced various
error messages, but the one that was most frequently given
was "fatal error" during package installation(and the only option
was to reboot).
I have tried to install all of these 3 distributions on 2 differnt
Hard disks with the same error messages. Thus i am fairly
sertain its not the HD. I have tried to partition the HD's with
both pqmagic and diskdruid and tried ext2 and ext3.
I have also installed the latest bios to my new motherboard.

The weird thing is that on one of the disks i already had
an old red hat 7.0 distro installed, but it was my thought to
reinstall everything and as such i formated the linux partition
before i tried to reinstall the new one.

sigh, i have used linux for quite some time now and is fairly
comfortable using and installing it, but this has me totaly
baffled.

What i have done since the last time i installed linux
is to buy a new motherboard (MSI-6380e). and since i have
no idea what else could be wrong, i now believe that somehow
my new motherboard is the culprit. though i have no idea why.
i have also bought an amd-xp1800 and 256 mb 333mhz ram.


Also i should mention that i have XP installed on one of the disks
(beginning of a 60GB disk). but the latest lilo versions and grub
should not have any problem installing beyond the 1024 limit.
But then again my other disk is totaly dedicated to linux,
but i receive the same error message when i try to install there
so i do not believe that this is the cause.

if any kind soul could help me out here trying to assertain what
is the cause of my trouble id be very gratefull.

regards
kenneth johansen

my HW consists of the following:

msi-6380e motherboard
256 mb 333MHz ram
amd xp1800 CPU
soundblaster live 1024 soundcard
60GB HD with windows XP installed
6GB HD with no OS installed (was to be my linux disk)
12xdvd player


ps: someone tell me if this should be in the software or hardware
thread!??

i think i also should mention that i have also tried to disconnect
the ide cable to the disk with windows XP, and then install on my 6GB disk (as the only disk on the system), but i had the
same problem -> q.e.d windows XP is proably not at fault here.

kenneth

Are you sure your RAM chips and your cpu temperature are ok ?
I once experienced fatal errors when this was the case.

Hope this helps, good luck

well, im currently at a comfortable 50 celsius, and peaks near
60 is possible, but that should be ok..considered its an amd cpu.

as for the RAM. I have not tried any third party ram "check" programs (maybe i should?), but then again windows XP
works flawlessly!!

kenneth

a few things to try.
bios settings, plug and play=off. cdrom PIO setting from 'auto' to '0', CAS latency to '3', AGP fast write 'off ', AGP x4 'off '

went through the bios.

pnp was on, set to off
CAS latency was 2.5, could change to 2, but didnt.
agp fast write was off.
agp x4, set to x2.
did not change cdrom pio....could this possible have anything to do with my problem?

anyways, restarted after doing the changes and tried installing
red hat 9.0. went through the setup routine, where i also set
diskdruid to format my partitions. as soon as it starts to install
packages(after formating the partitions, one ext3 and one swap),
i got the following message:" Error mounting hdd1 as /: invalid argument, this most likely means that the partition has not been formated. press ok to reboot"

now, this error message i have had several times before, on
both of my disks...even though i have had pqmagic and ddruid
set to format the partitions!!!???
this is really weird.....

anyways, thanx for the help, and keep the suggestions coming
eventually i might be able to do this

http://www.memtest86.com/#download0

There's a program to check your memory, if that might be a concern. Another thing to try is the mem=nopentium option in your boot params.

Just some ideas

Cool

tried that mem check program, everything worked just fine
was kinda hoping for an error, but no such luck

what is this mem=nopentium option you are talking about ?
where do i do this? and what effect would this have when i boot ?

kenneth

I am not sure how it works, but I have read that it sometimes is required for Athlon's although I have never had a problem with my 2.

Anyway, I do believe you plug it in at the beginning of the install. (I am most familiar with Mandy's install screens so that's what I will refer to) At the very beginning where you see the "press Enter to install, or F1 for help" Press F1. I believe you enter it on that line. If not, at least you can see some other choices of things to try in there that might help you to get things rolling.

Good Luck

Cool

ah, yea i get it...hmmmm....well i'll most sertainly try it....
but.. sigh..to be perfectly honest i have my doubts....
damnit. ive been using amd and linux since red hat 4.0 and
the k6-2 came out
and NOW i experience trouble ?
grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

IMHO i think theres something fishy about my motherboard.
but checking out the MSI homepage didnt help squat

but then again, its a fairly common board nowadays and i have
been unable to find anyone else with my problem
so who knows...oh well. ill check the boot options tomorrow..
im going to bed now.

oh and thanx for trying to help me, appriciate it


kenneth

Could it be that your new motherboard has a special hard drive controller on it that requires a storage controller driver (i.e. Highpoint / Promise) ? If you have two IDE pairs on board, try to use the one that is not connected to any kind of special controller.

I have a dual processor MP 1900 on a MSI master with scsi and 7.3 works but the *8.0 goes to heaven if I try to install it... Your problem,
I had one like it on an older system and went back and did an low level format and that fixed it.

i have no idea, but ill check that for sure.

kenneth

hmm izattso..havent tried low level format yet...maybe that
should do the trick...though it is kinda weird that it happends
on both my disks!?

kenneth