I am trying to install FC8 on an empty drive with no luck. It gets to copying files and locks up.

I have an AMD 64-bit Athlon with 1GB memory on an ASUS motherboard. I am trying to install to an IBM 20GB PATA drive (set as the Master on IDE 0). I have run IBM disk diagnostics on it with no errors. If I configure it with Windows-compatible format, Windows reads/writes to it without error.

Both the BIOS and Fedora return no errors on memory checks. Fedora thinks the install DVD is also good.

I've tried default-configuration installations and modified-configuration ones. For the modified ones, I've changed formatting to tell it to erase the entire drive and set it up as it pleases. I've also tried removing some of the hardware checks thinking that might be an issue.

None of this works. It chugs along until it starts copying files and then locks up. It doesn't always lock up in the same place. One time it locked up setting up the disk architecture, another copying the kernel and others copying various files. It has never proceded beyond the 25% point in copying files.

When it locks up, it is completely--nothing responds. For those familiar with Red Hat's CAPS LOCK check, it will not even do that.

Bottom line is I have a computer that Windows has installed on twice with no hickups on the first attempt. I've made more than half a dozen attempts to install Fedora, which cannot even manage to simply copy files to an empty 20GB drive!

While I would love to run Fedora on this computer, it shouldn't be this hard.

If anyone recognizes glitch I'm encountering, I'd love to how you got through it. Otherwise, I guess I'm just venting.

Your right it should not be this hard.......
You should realize two things, first that F8 sees all media as SCSI devices now, even this PATA hard drive. One can try passing the all-generic-ide option: linux all-generic-ide

Second, ASUS motherboards are known to be somewhat of a problem, use google and search on all-generic-ide; Results 1 - 10 of about 3,510 for all-generic-ide.


See: http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...instal-540255/

Lenard,

Thank you--I'll give it a try and report back.

Unfortuantely, this didn't change anything; the install continues to hang up. I'm intrigued by the idea that this might be a PATA/SATA issue. When I tried it, it hung up trying to set up the file structure (even using all-genereic-ide). I have an available SATA port that I might be able to connect the drive to.

As for the motherboard, what would be some good choices?

Thanks.

See: http://www.linuxquestions.org/hcl/index.php/cat/8
You may even find clues about your ASUS motherboard at the HCL

It does seem a little like a hardware problem, although the issue is normally with the CD or DVD drive, rather than the hard drive. Anyway, the reason (or one reason) is that the parallel ATA controller has been taken out of the chipset of many new boards and has been moved to a third-party drive controller. Very often, the third party controller is made by JMicron. As a result, something goes wrong with regard to hardware detection or driver loading (I am not sure what) and people tend to have problems as a result.

FWIW, regarding the hardware, one solution I opted for in my latest build was to go all SATA--both hard and optical drives. With this setup (Gigabyte GA-P35C-DS3R using an Intel Core 2 Duo processor), the installation proceeded without issue.

Well, I am glad to hear this. It really is a pain when things refuse to work right.

Thank you very much.

I did make a little progress. I tried installing just the i386 DVD instead of the x86_64 version. It installed (I'm typing this from Linux at this time!!!).

My next issue, though, is I'm running it from the Rescue option. Trying to start it normally, it had problems reading the file structure it just set up. When I get a chance, I'll post the actual errors that caused it to lock up during start up.

Thanks again for all of your help.

Quick update: the error is a buffer I/O error on sdc1 with several blocks listed. Is this the swap file?

When I installed the i386 version, I did the default install, without any parameters. Would it help to reinstall it with Lenard's all-genericide?

Thanks.

Sounds like the hard drive may be going south, may be time to retire and replace.

I have no idea what sdc1 is, but you do;

fdisk -l
cat /etc/fstab