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anand.arumug 12-20-2009 10:31 AM

CentOS 5.4 netinstall problems
 
Hello All,

This is the closest thread I could find to post CentOS distro related problems. If there is a separate thread for this distro, please point me to it. Thanks.

Here is the problem I am having:

My laptop is a Toshiba Satellite M45-S269. For some strange reason, the BIOS was not recognizing the bootable CD which had the netinstall.iso. I tried few things like change the boot sequence (made CDROM as the first item in the sequence) and rebooted the machine. But it did not work at all. I powered down the machine completely. The next day when I booted the laptop and the bootable CD was recognized and I was able to install it. But the strange thing is, it is not complete yet. It has been 24 hours since I started the installation. The installation and configuration process is terribly terribly slow. Usually how much time does it take to install and configure an enterprise edition of Linux. This is the first time I am doing it. So far I have only installed Ubuntu desktop edition. Have any of you experienced this before? What could be wrong here?!?!?!

The laptop had WinXP home before. During the installation of CentOS, I specified to format the entire hard drive and install.

In the netinstall program, I specified the network settings for both IP and IPv6 as DHCP. I am not sure whether this has anything to do with the speed. But the laptop is physically connected to the router via an ethernet cable.

I can only get to the install log only after its completely done. Or is there any other means to access it?

Thanks for your time.

Cheers...

PenguinWearsFedora 12-20-2009 07:34 PM

Did you the check the .iso file (md5sum) or you can check it at the start of installation. Check your BIOS if you can boot from a USB, write diskboot.img (in the images directory) to USB and boot from there.

DrLove73 12-21-2009 02:26 AM

Why don't you download Installation DVD, or if only CD is option download set of 6 CD's and avoid network installation all together. Your NIC might not be supported out of the box so network installation is not recommended.

anand.arumug 12-21-2009 10:02 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by PenguinWearsFedora (Post 3799371)
Did you the check the .iso file (md5sum) or you can check it at the start of installation. Check your BIOS if you can boot from a USB, write diskboot.img (in the images directory) to USB and boot from there.

I tried this option before posting the problem. Booting via USB is not an option in the BIOS :( Thanks for your suggestion.

Cheers...

anand.arumug 12-21-2009 10:06 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by DrLove73 (Post 3799579)
Why don't you download Installation DVD, or if only CD is option download set of 6 CD's and avoid network installation all together. Your NIC might not be supported out of the box so network installation is not recommended.

After 48 hrs of waiting, the installation and configuration went thru. I left it last night when it was in the last stage of configuration where it showed a popup message saying you need to reboot for some of your selections to get effect. I pressed OK and went to bed. When I came to see it in the morning, all I see now is a blue screen. Dont know in what state it is?!?!?!

DrLove73 12-21-2009 12:32 PM

I still suggest you download 6 CD's on another machine and do clean install (select to format the partitions or set it to delete all linux partitions and to use default. To download 2 GB on 512 Kbps you would need some 9-10 hours. Anything more means something is wrong.

anand.arumug 12-22-2009 12:20 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by DrLove73 (Post 3800198)
I still suggest you download 6 CD's on another machine and do clean install (select to format the partitions or set it to delete all linux partitions and to use default. To download 2 GB on 512 Kbps you would need some 9-10 hours. Anything more means something is wrong.

I tried installing from the CDs as well. After loading CD 1/6, the installer completely formatted the disk (as I specified) and started a fresh install. After specifying all the settings, the installer kept complaining that it could not read certain rpm files and said "Possibly the media is corrupt". I kept retrying and the name of the file that could not be read kept changing. But after few attempts it kept complaining about the same file. In the last attempt it was complaining about a file whose name begins with 'setserial'.

I checked the md5sum and also did a media check. Both said the cd 1/6 iso file is ok. But I could not proceed with the install any further.

I even tried Fedora 12. All I was able to see was a nice desktop background wallpaper with the mouse pointer and nothing else.

Right now my laptop only have GRUB installed.

Any pointers to troubleshoot is greatly appreciated.

Thanks for your time.

PS: the link from which I downloaded the isos is:
http://mirrors.kernel.org/centos/5.4/isos/i386/

DrLove73 12-22-2009 06:05 AM

I have a very crazy thing I want you to do. Please check or replace your RAM memory.

Some Windows installations when they have problems with RAM, they report error reading CD.

PenguinWearsFedora 12-22-2009 12:37 PM

Hi
Instead of downloading whole DVD try downloading the first CD, you can do a minimal install from CD#1

On this screen deselect everything, and select Customize Now.

On the next screen deselect everything from left and right column, literally everything, and click Next. This will isntall a mimial CentOS 5.4 install on your system. After reboot when at prompt, login as root, and install X Window System, and GNOME or KDE or Xfce by doing:

#yum install @x-base or yum groupinstall "X Window System"
or
#yum install @gnome-desktop or yum groupinstall "GNOME Desktop Environment"

do a "yum grouplist -v | less" to see package groups.

Lets see how it's goes.

anand.arumug 12-23-2009 10:22 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by PenguinWearsFedora (Post 3801451)
Hi
Instead of downloading whole DVD try downloading the first CD, you can do a minimal install from CD#1

On this screen deselect everything, and select Customize Now.

On the next screen deselect everything from left and right column, literally everything, and click Next. This will isntall a mimial CentOS 5.4 install on your system. After reboot when at prompt, login as root, and install X Window System, and GNOME or KDE or Xfce by doing:

#yum install @x-base or yum groupinstall "X Window System"
or
#yum install @gnome-desktop or yum groupinstall "GNOME Desktop Environment"

do a "yum grouplist -v | less" to see package groups.

Lets see how it's goes.

Thanks for your suggestion. This is exactly what I am trying to do - a bare bones install. The screen shots you have specified could not be opened. I am getting a "403: Forbidden" error. Could you please post the screen shots again? Thanks.

Cheers...

anand.arumug 12-23-2009 10:24 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by DrLove73 (Post 3801081)
I have a very crazy thing I want you to do. Please check or replace your RAM memory.

Some Windows installations when they have problems with RAM, they report error reading CD.

I did do a memcheck86+ test from the Fedora LiveCD. Will that suffice or are you suggesting a different test? If its a different test, can you please let me know how I can run it from the grub prompt?

Thanks for your time.

Cheers...

DrLove73 12-23-2009 03:24 PM

Hm, no, that should suffice.

Have you performed a media check prior to installation? Do that on that notebook and also on some other PC and compare results to see if the media has problems or your CD/DVD device is faulty.

PenguinWearsFedora 12-23-2009 05:26 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by anand.arumug (Post 3802554)
Thanks for your suggestion. This is exactly what I am trying to do - a bare bones install. The screen shots you have specified could not be opened. I am getting a "403: Forbidden" error. Could you please post the screen shots again? Thanks.

Cheers...

I took those from Howtoforge's The Perfect Server CentOS 5.2. I posted first two images on the Page 2 of installation.

Have you downloaded CD#1 or not?

Good luck.

anand.arumug 12-23-2009 08:31 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by PenguinWearsFedora (Post 3801451)
Hi
Instead of downloading whole DVD try downloading the first CD, you can do a minimal install from CD#1

On this screen deselect everything, and select Customize Now.

On the next screen deselect everything from left and right column, literally everything, and click Next. This will isntall a mimial CentOS 5.4 install on your system. After reboot when at prompt, login as root, and install X Window System, and GNOME or KDE or Xfce by doing:

#yum install @x-base or yum groupinstall "X Window System"
or
#yum install @gnome-desktop or yum groupinstall "GNOME Desktop Environment"

do a "yum grouplist -v | less" to see package groups.

Lets see how it's goes.

@PenguinWearsFedora: Yes your idea worked :) Finally I got the bare bones of CentOS 5.4 installed in my laptop :) Thank you all for your valuable time and suggestions.

Here is what I did:

1. Inserted CD 1/6 and started a fresh install.
2. After providing the regional date and time settings, in the list of programs to be installed, I cleared all that was selected to be installed by default. Made sure that nothing was selected in all sub-categories.
3. The installer then started calculating the dependencies and reported that libselinux-1.33.4-5.5.el5.i386.rpm could not be read. The reason it could not read was either it is missing or corrupt media. I could either reboot or retry. I retried 3 times and got the same message.
4. Removed CD 1/6 and inserted 2/6 thinking it is in CD 2/6.
5. The installer ejected the CD and asked to insert CD 1/6.
6. Reported that pango-1.14.9-6.el5.i386.rpm is not found. Hit retry, then it report that pciutils-2.2.3.7.el5.i386.rpm. Retried 3-4 times and got the same message. So repeated step-4.
7. Step-5 was the outcome. After inserting CD 1/6, the installer finally started installing the OS.

Right now, I am running in text mode and nothing but the bare bones is installed. Only the root a/c is there. From here I will have to add users and other things. I guess this is nice so that I can learn a lot more that can be done via command line and not depend on the GUI :)

@PenguinWearsFedora: Thanks for the screen shots.

Even though the symptom seems solved, I think the problem still exists. I will keep digging to find out what the root cause is.

Anyhow, my sincere thanks to all of you for your help and wish you all happy holidays and a very happy new year!

Cheers...

anand.arumug 12-23-2009 11:15 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by PenguinWearsFedora (Post 3802931)
I took those from Howtoforge's The Perfect Server CentOS 5.2. I posted first two images on the Page 2 of installation.

Have you downloaded CD#1 or not?

Good luck.

How do you take screen shots of the installer program? Will print screen key work? If yes, where will you paste and save the buffer?:scratch:

Thanks...


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