Can't install Red Hat 4 on DELL Optiplex 745
 

Hi guys,

I tried to install Red Hat EL WS 4 Update 4 on a DELL Optiplex 745 but when I select:

"What type of media contains the packages to be installed"

I select Local CDROM and I get:

"Unable to find any devices of the type needed for this installation type. Would you like to manually select your driver or use a driver disk?"

This a very recent machine and I suspect the problem is the lack of drivers for the Intel Q965 chipset.

Where can I find these? The Intel website redirects me to another website and it says I have to compile the drivers... where am I suppose to do that if I can install? Can I compile the drivers on RH5 or other distro, burn on a CD and use to install RH4?

I installed Red Hat Desktop 5 with no problems...

THANKS

PS: I think Fedora Core 6 installs fine but it never actually starts. Something about "kernel panic".

I had this problem with a Mandrake install about 3 years ago. My problem I don't believe was a drivers problem, because I tried that install disk on multiple computers to see if it was the computer or disk. My problem ended up being the install disk. I tried the install disk on over 10 different computers, laptops included. I thought the install disk was corrupt so I downloaded and burned it again. But to no avail. If you find a way to fix this error let me know. I have installed multiple linux operating systems with absolutely no problems on multiple machines. This problem had stumped me in the past and you just reminded me of it. Thanks :)

You might check if your device controller is supported with the default kernel. What does 'lspci' give you? Assuming you can boot into some form of linux on that pc?

DragonM15

MAybe this site will help. It is Redhat Enterprise 5 Beta 2 on your PC.

http://www.ski-epic.com/2007_small_b...iplex_745.html

Hope this helps,
DragonM15

Optiplex 745s have an SATA CD/DVD drive if I'm not mistaken, perhaps RHEL4 doesn't like that (it is getting a bit old).

What I found when I was looking around is that it has the ICH6 Family Controller which has been known to cause problems in linux... However I am waiting for an 'lspci' to be certain.

DragonM15

Thanks for your replies. I can install Fedora 6 but I can never start it (kernel panic and then something else).

However Fedora Core 6 loads the ata_piix driver so I think this is what enables it to recognize the CD drive and HDD.

Where can I download this driver?

I found these using filemirrors.com:

http://ftp1.us.dell.com/sata/ata_pii...iarch-1.tar.gz
ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/SATA/ata_piix-0.93c-1c.tar.gz

How can I load them on install? The PC has no floppy drive... can I use a USB stick?

Thanks

Do you have another PC? You could do an NFS or FTP install that way if you really need RHEL4. Once the CD boots you don't need to access it again to do an NFS or FTP install. This is how I do installs on stubborn systems like yours.

That, or go with RHEL5 (or CentOS 5).

I saw this suggested on another thread:

linux all-generic-ide noprobe noapic

I tried it and I get a loop of "Disabling IRQ #9" and eventually it stops but the keyboard doesn't respond so I can't do anything.

I removed noapic and I got a loop of "Disabling IRQ #209"

I removed noprobe and also got IRQ #209 loop.

I think this string helps as I can see the DVD drive being recognized but then I can't go ahead with the installation :confused:

I also use the ata_piix for my hardware. However I must state in my lilo.conf file to tell it not to probe the ide0 and ide1 interfaces (my hard drive and dvd drive) Otherwise I get a kernel panic saying it cant read the root device.
I dont know if this will help you, but the command I put in my lilo.conf is:
This forces the ata_piix module to be used rather than the generic ide interface. This also allows me to have dma support rather than... well not ;)

Hope this helps a little bit.

DragonM!5

I use GRUB and I have several distros + windows installed so I can't use your tip.

EDIT: I changed SATA mode to Legacy in the BIOS settings and it seems to be working now! :D

Red Hat installed... but it doesn't run :scratch:

I get an error booting:

Fedora Core 6 just reboots and Caixa Magica 11 (a Portuguese distro based on Red Hat I think) gives me the same error as RH.

Any ideas? :confused:

Any ideas? :confused:

dell optiplex 755 / redhat enterprise linux 4
 

I realize this is an *old* thread, but for posterity sake:

My RHEL4v3 install was asking for a device driver. I went into the system setup (F2 after power on) and flipped the SATA operation to "legacy" mode. Install worked flawlessly after that.

-c

Unable to find any devices of the type needed .....
 

Yeah, I followed this advice [change the SATA operation to "legacy" mode in system setup] for a new Dell Optiplex 755, and it worked! Its installing now ...

Thanks to all for this tip. I am new to linux and this was my first stumbling block. Thanks to the posters, I got over it quickly.

Thanks!

Diko