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... |
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.
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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.
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Cheers... |
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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.
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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/ |
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. |
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. |
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Cheers... |
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Thanks for your time. Cheers... |
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. |
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Have you downloaded CD#1 or not? Good luck. |
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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... |
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Thanks... |
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