ok, total linux n00b here. i'm trying to install slackware 10.0 on my machine (AMD Duron 1GHz, 256 RAM, 6G hdd, Acer 32x CD-ROM,ummm...beige) and i am getting MASSIVE fatal errors when installing (i lost count at around 240 of them, and that was only on the first disc.) I've tried a full install complete, full install with only selected packages and newbie install and got the same results (obviously didn't get as many fatal errors when installing with selected packages). Here's what I've checked due to reading other threads: The CD appears to be fine. I just burned it yesterday so it hasn't had a chance to get scratched yet. There is a md5 checksum on the CD. I downloaded it from a link on the slackware website so it should be a valid copy. Can anyone offer any advice? The other piece of info i should give is that this machine has 2 hdd's. the first (60GHz) is running xp and the second (6GHz) is my linux drive. I have partitioned the linux drive as follows: 5Gb <-root 1Gb<-swap.
Please help
melee

Those are GB, not GHz ...

6GB sounds a bit small for a system with those
other specs ... are you sure the drive is fine? My
prime suspect would be a faulty cable, or maybe
drives with incompatible specs on the same IDE
chain ... what is the layout of devices on your
IDE chain? Are master and slave settings correct,
if any device is set to master or slave, you know
for sure the other isn't "cable select"?

What were those "fatal errors"?


Cheers,
Tink

Sorry about the GHz/Gb thing...its been a long night. It's been corrected. As far as the hdd is concerned, I believe both hdd's are set to cable select and are on the first IDE channel. The 60 GB hdd is set on the master connector and the 6GB hdd is set on the slave connector. The second IDE channel has 1 CD-ROM drive. The hdd was working fine as a windows drive with the same cable that is currently attached.
As far as the fatal errors...again, there were over 240 of them on the first disk alone. So pretty much every single package that it tried to install failed. If you think it's important i'll go through the install process again and write down the first 10 or so...
melee

I had the same issue with my laptop. It seemed to me, but I'm a noob as well, but I installed slack and other versions of linux on the same drive and it seemed to me that when I was installing over a previous linux install I would have problems. I re partition and reformat the drives with DOS and then re partition and reformat using cfdisk and the slack install setup and everything went well. I know that this was probably the LONG way to do this but it worked for me. Good luck!

Slack will display some process information on one
of the other consoles. The fact that the package extraction
fails is just a symptom, the cause is probably visible
somewhere else ...


Cheers,
Tink

hmmm, i assume you mean the virtual consoles and if so, they only displayed the basic command line interface.
*The fact that the package extraction fails is just a symptom, the cause is probably visible
somewhere else ... *

i couldn't agree more, but where?
melee

I think the problem is with the cable select option. To use cable select you need a special cable. A regular 40 pin IDE cable is not a cable select compatible cable. And just because windows saw the drive does not impress me. Try setting the jumpers on the drive to master and slave and see if the problem goes away.

thanks joseph_m, i'll try that as soon as i get home. i never assumed that would be an issue as the fdisk and cfdisk utilities had no problem seeing the hdd's when formatting. but...stranger things have happened. i'll try it.
melee

ok, so i put the 6 GB hdd as master and disconnected the other drive completey. The pc didn't like this so i'm guessing that the hdd might be quirky, but that's another issue for another time. I swapped out the 6 GB for a 20 GB hdd and put it as slave with my 60 GB hdd as master. ran setup, partitioned and formatted the new hdd and I'm still getting the same errors. taking advice from Tinkster, i went to the virtual consoles (vc 4 to be exact) and the following info was displayed: "mount: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/hdb1, or too many mounted file systems." now that i've found this info, what does it mean and how do i fix it?
melee

After you partitioned the hdd, what did you format
hdb1 as, what file-system did you use?


Cheers,
Tink

Another thing to consider would be a bad disk but I'm out on a limb here. I'd be sure and redownload and reburn the disks. Another thing to consider is when you used cfdisk did you label the partitions (I have no clue how cfdisk works I always use just plain old fdisk). Make sure your swap partition was labeled as swap and that your regular partition was labeled as a linux partition. Also make sure you really did format it that way and didn't just accidentally canceled out of cfdisk w/o writing your new partitions to the drive.

That's not what I told you to try. But what you forgot to do is setup the bios for a different drive configuration. Some bios will autodetect what the drive is and some will not, depends on age. When you put the 6 gig drive as master did you reset the bios????

joseph_m, i set the jumpers to master slave and it didn't help. then i took the 20 GB hdd out completely to see if that would help..it didn't
and my bios didn't have a problem autodetecting the hard drive swap so, no i did not (manually) reset the bios.

tinkster, i formatted with ext2
melee

Back to the beginning, it may be just a CD problem after all, for CD boot problem, there are some foppy install disk image available, it won't hurt to try them...

Ok, this started out being just mildly annoying, but now it's just plain frustrating. I burned a new copy of iso disk 1 (from a different mirror, even) and it's still a no go. I tried switching to reiserfs and to ext 3 and no luck. On my way now to find floppy install disk images at the suggestion of cedrik. Anyone else have any suggestions?
melee