Hi

Firstly, I am a new to the whole Linux thing but to the point.

I dl'ed Slackware 10.2 ISO's, burnt them and proceeded (well tried) too boot into the installer. Unfortunately during this time it spews alot of text (I think this is normal, but no formatting, just fills up the screen) and then halts to the point where my NUM, CAPS and SCROLL lock indicators will keep flashing till forever and the install halts.

Any ideas? I dunno if it's a system incompatibility, but here are my specs:

MSI K7N2 Mobo (NForce2 based mobo)
AMD Sempron 2800+
768 meg RAM
Leadtek Geforce 6800 LE

Thx for the help

This would seem to suggest a kernel panic. Are you using a SATA rather than IDE? This might create a problem - also, is there a chance that the iso you downloaded got corrupted somewhere along the line?

I am using IDE, disabled SATA in the BIOS. The ISO's Are ok, checked them and all.

I would like to know what kernel you are using?

If you are hitting enter when it asks you to select a kernel you are using the kernel 'bare'. The only problem here is that the default kernel (if that is the one you selected) is not compatable with all the hardware in your computer. when you get to the point where you need to select the kernel press F3. this will display a list of alternative kernels that you can type in. Look at the descriptions and see if any of them seem to fit your particulat installation better.

Also. Could you please tell us what the last line displayed on the screen is when your NUM, CAPS and SCROLL lock indicators are flashing.

Couple of possibilities:
1. check the compatability of your hardware systems
2. burn speed of the *.iso CDs might play a role

However, what error messages are you getting?

Beyond this, I'm going to have to bow out because I'm getting in over my head now. Good luck & don't give up!! Sorry for not having a better first off experience. You might also want to consider another distro until you gain more hands-on experience with GNU/Linux.

Hey
I tried most of the Kernel choices which resemble my system (SATA, RAID, Bare with acpi) and still no luck.
When using bare the last text printed out is something like : "Raid5 : Using function : pIII_se (5432.800 MB/sec) and then all lights to on.

I dunno how the burn speed could be a factor, but it was burnt @ 40x
Thanks again

I definitely have had issues in the past with burn speeds being too high. I would try re-burning the ISO image at a speed of 4x and see if that solves the issue.
Good Luck.

On which drive and partition is your system installed? Try this:

bare.i root=/dev/hda1 noinitrd ro

that's in the case is you have it on the primary master

try also :

bare.i root=/dev/hda2 noinitrd ro

also try putting /dev/hdb1 /dev/hdb2

that all depends on which ide port and partition is your linux installed
You probably get kernel panic because kernel, even though properly chosen, can't find the root partition where your actual system is.

If it works (and I'am pretty sure it does) you have to configure the lilo. The easyiest way - use menu driven liloconf, choose expert mode, add linux partition to lilo header and install. Put proper root part information when asked - the one that worked for you when loading the kernel.

It would also be helpful if you tell us the exact error verbatim. It might shed a little more light on the exact problem

krizzz, he doesn't actually have Linux installed on the machine. He is getting a kernel panic before the installer even starts.

Again, it is almost impossible to help without the exact error the kernel is halting on.

Definitely panic; my bet's on burning speed.

I don't know.

Once the kernel messages start going, that means the kernel has already been decompressed and successfully loaded into RAM. If there was a problem reading the disc, it would never have gotten that far, it would have failed at the decompression.

Since the kernel is in RAM, there is no more reading of the disc until it is time to mount the initrd from the CD, but again, if that could not be read, he would get a "Cannot mount root device" error. From the last kernel message he apparently sees (assuming that is really the last one), that should be before the initrd is mounted.

Good point. The hardware doesn't look too esoteric to me, though, so I can't imagine...

What HDDs are you using?