Hi, I cannot boot linux unless I enter interactive setup and don't start harddrake. Otherwise the last thing I see in the boot sequence is "Checking For New Hardware", and then the computer freezes (although it does respond to Ctrl Alt Del).

The computer is an AMD 64 3400 running Mandrake 10.1; two hard disks; /dev/sda, which is SCSI, contains the bootloader; /dev/sda1 is / (there are some other partitions also). The second hd is an IDE with various data.

If I don't load harddrake the only thing I notice that doesn't work properly is resolution - KDE thinks it is in 1024x768, but isn't, and the screen scrolls from side to side as the mouse hits it. Also the top and bottom are cropped, but they don't scroll. I can get around that by switching resolution to 800x600 (which is obviously non-optimal).

My video card is an NVidia FX 5200, which doesn't yet have the proper drivers installed. However, on a previous install of Mandrake (which was in itself broken -- in a different way) the generic NVidia driver worked just fine...although I'm guessing that harddrake must have loaded it previously.

Indeed, it looks like I don't have the generic driver running:

> lsmod | grep nv
sata_nv 5604 4
libata 38020 1 sata_nv

So, my questions here are:

1) How to debug harddrake? What is most likely causing it to freeze?
2) What does harddrake do anyway that I cannot get around by other means? Can I just take it out of the boot sequence?
3) What is the generic Nvidia module? I will install the correct driver in due course, but only once I can be sure that the installation is otherwise fundamentally sound, since it is somewhat of a PITA to install the correct driver.

BTW, the GUI harddrake works just fine once I'm in KDE.

Thanks in advance for your help.

first of all its handy to get your video drivers to work. There are some good howto's on this site.
second, just uninstall harddrake with
# urpme harddr (uninstall all harddrake files)

reboot (for checking if it boots normal)

reinstall harddrake
# urpmi harddrake

thats all aint it?
be shure you know how to install the NVIDIA drivers for your system.

I ended up just moving harddrake to last thing in the boot sequence before the dm loads. Everything works fine now. So I guess it was depending on something else being initialized??

proberbly yes. As long as it works, it works....

i always prefer deinstalling and then reinstalling because urpmi makes sure all dependencies are solved.

greetings Bas