This is getting ridiculous
 

It is now 7:57 PM, and I have been trying to install Red Hat (7.3, 8.0 and 9.0) on a 700 MHz computer with 128 MB of RAM since 11:30 AM. I absolutely cannot complete an installation.

I usually get about 40% of the way through the copy portion of the install (by the way, it's installing stuff I told it not to), and the bloody thing just crashes with "install terminated abnormally"

What am I doing wrong?

(Oh, yeah, I tried Debian, too. Same thing)

It sounds like your CD Drive is having problems reading the CDs I would run a media check from redhat CD1 (type "linux mediacheck" at the "boot:" prompt). You may also want to try a different/newer cd drive. Are the CDs the boxed edition or are they home burnt?

home burnt, and I already ran a media check (RH8 and 9 prompt you to do it before anaconda loads)

It certainly looks like a prob;em with your cd-drive. Why don't you try installing with another drive and post the results?

tried it with another drive, no dice.

Tried re-burning the CDs (just in case)...and the bugger worked. Looks like Red Hat's media checker is a complete piece of CRAP.

Of course, I'm still stuck with a server that's a piece of crap...i.e., if you nudge it, it reboots, and it crashes within minutes of logging into KDE, since a server doesn't need to be logged in, and I have the know-how to do almost *all* of my administration from the command line, it *should* suffice.