I picked up a used IBM T21 thinkpad (800 MHz Pentium III SpeedStep, 256 MB) and have been trying to install using the "vanilla" install option with the Woody (Debian 3.0 kernel 2.2.20) 7-CD set. The general operation of the laptop (I tried websurfing and listening to some streaming audio but am kicking myself for not trying to play a CD) seemed good before wiping out the one windows partition that was there (windows 2000).

Now I've spent all day trying to get Woody installed but it keeps freezing while it's installing. Then I have to either do a ctrl-alt-del, or sometimes disconnect the power, to start over again. It only ever freezes when it's getting information from the CD, never inbetween when it's waiting for input. Apart from that, where it freezes in the install seems to be random.

One time I got as far as having the kernel and driver modules installed and I managed to boot linux from the hard drive. Then it asked me to enter the install CDs one-by-one so that it could create an inventory of the available packages. It told me it couldn't find the CDs and it seemed to tell me it was looking in /cdrom, so I told it to look in /mnt/cdrom for the heck of it since I really don't know where it's supposed to look. Then it at least started reading and seemed happy for a while but followed by spitting out a pile of errors which I didn't record.

So I tried installing XP to see what would happen. No hitches so for that reason I don't think it's hardware but who knows.

So I tried KNOPPIX instead. KNOPPIX V3.8.1 RELEASE 2005-04-08
When it does boot off the KNOPPIX CD it sometimes freezes at the "Loading linux and Loading minirt.gz" introductory page.
Sometimes it goes further. If it does then I get something like:

Scanning for USB/Firewire devices... Done
Accessing KNOPPIX CDROM AT /dev/hdc/...
Setting paths...hdc: media error (bad sector): status=0x51 { DriveReady SeekComplete Error }
hdc: media error (bad sector): error=0x34 { AbortedCommand LastFailedSense=0x03 }

Then a whole steam of errors along the lines of:

-----------
Buffer I/O error on device hdc, logical block 4685
hdc: media error (bad sector): status=0x51 { DriveReady SeekComplete Error }
hdc: media error (bad sector): error=0x34 { AbortedCommand LastFailedSense=0x03 }
ide: failed opcode was: unknown
end_request: I/O error, dev hdc, sector 22696
cloop: Read error at pos 378122240 in file /cdrom/KNOPPIX/KNOPPIX, 16564 bytes lost
Buffer I/O error on device cloop0, logical block 514538
--------------------

and finally ending with:

/linuxrc: cannot create /var/run/utmp: directory nonexistent
Kernel panic - not syncing: VFS: Unable to mount root fs on unknown-block(1,3)

One time when using Knoppix it made it as far as finding the soundcard.

The Knoppix and Debian CDs work successfully on a completely different computer (some old generic Pentium 233 MHz desktop).

Okay I hope this information is meaningful to someone who knows the answer. I have experience using linux but little experience working as root so I'm feeling kind of stuck. I'm sorry the only thing I have to go on are these error messages, but if there's something more substantial I can look for please let me know.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Chad

I've been working with it some more and I'm pretty sure this computer just doesn't read CD's properly. It was hard to tell since it intermittently works and doesn't work, but at this point I'm pretty sure it's as simple as that. Thanks to everyone who read through my post.

Dunno if it's going to be of any help. I've got an IBM T21 too and it doesn't read rewritable CDs but that's all. I don't remember exactly whether it can read DVDs but I think so.
I've installed Mandrake 10.1 Official and it runs wonderfully. If your distro is on rewritables just try and take the pain of burning it onto non-rewriteable CDs.

Thanks for the advice. I was using rewritable CDs as a matter of fact. I'm away from home for a few weeks but when I get back I'll try your suggestion. Seems like that could very well be it.

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Turns out this was just a faulty CD drive. I had it replaced and it works great.