Hi,

I've tried install Red Hat 8.0 about 5 times now, and every time when it gets to installing the packages it freezes. The partitioning and formatting part of the install seem to work fine. It starts off copying the packages just fine, but always freezes in a different place. When it freezes it doesn't attempt to access the cd drive, and both the activity and power light stay on. The only way to get out of this state is via the power button. I tried cleaning the cd and leaving the computer off for hours so it could cool down but neither of these have helped. I've given more than adequate space to the swap, root, and boot partitions prior to this. I'm attempting to install Red Hat to a fresh 120 GB Western Digital WD1200JB hard drive (slave) and I'm using Windows 98 on a smaller (12 GB) hard drive (master). If anybody has any idea on how to help me I would appreciate it as installing Red Hat was one of my primary reasons for purchasing the new drive. If any hardware information please tell me what you need and how I can obtain it.

Thanks,

John

When I was having this problem installing Red Hat 8 it turned out that my cdrom drive was not working 100%. I replaced the cdrom and the install went fine.

I was afraid of a response like that. I can still play CDs and run stuff off of CDs but I guess that doesn't necessarily make it a good drive. Anyhow, if anybody else has had this problem and taken care of it any other way a post would be appreciated.

Thanks a lot

I have had this porblem before and found that it was defective media. Are your running the check media option during the install process? It would be nice to rule out defective media before proceeding any further.

No, I don't believe I was doing that. Could you tell me how to do that so I can check that off the list?

Found it - passed the media check. =\

to see the diagnostics, go to the other virtual consoles (if graphical install, ctrl-alt-F1, f2 and so on, for text insall, just alt-F1, f2...)

Please get rib of Redhat 8.0. it is outdated and problmatic version
please use Redhat 9.0 for Fedora Core 1.
most of my unknown problem solved in these version.

Yes, that is a good suggestion.. I would definitely try that before making any hardware investments. If I were you I would move away from Red Hat completely.

Turns out it was a known bug that I was experiencing. Red Hat 9.0 install went much better, but yet I'm faced with another bug which keeps resetting my IDE controller and it hasn't been resolved yet. Also attempting the update the kernel made it impossible to boot and I had to do a fresh install. Getting a little frustrated here.. I'm considering trying Slackware, any comments?

RH9's support ends April 31, 2004, so you're better off with fedora...

Slackware has long been one of my favorite distros but its lack of a well integrated package manager has always bothered me. If you have some free time and want to learn how a Linux system is put together definately try Gentoo. Arch Linux is also worth considering. Although it is young, its package management system is off to a good start and based on optimized binary packages rather than source, like Gentoo.