Computer hangs when trying to run Ubuntu from the Live CD
 

I am trying to run the Ubuntu 8.04.1 in my desktop computer; however, when I try, I get the message below after a long wait without any activity. I purchased the computer in 2005. It has 1G of ram and a 2GHZ intel processor. It also has an after market video card which allows me to run two monitors while using windows XP. I tried the same ubuntu version in my laptop and it runs just fine. Both computers have a recovery drive partition, and yet the laptop seems to work fine. I tried using the factory video card and disbling the new one, but still doesn't work. I would really appreciate your help with this problem. Thanks in advance.


Message displayed:


*Preparing restricted drivers...[OK]
*Setting the system clock
*starting basic networking...[OK]
*Starting kernel event manager...[OK]
*Loading hardware drivers...
Segmentation fault
/etc/rcs.d/S10udev: 105 /usr/bin/tput: not found
/etc rcS.d/S10udev: 1: usplash_write: not found
/etc/init.d/rc:317: unsplash_write: not found
/etc/init.d/rc: 317: sed: not found
init: rcS main process (5621) killed by SEGV signal
init: Unable to execute "/bin/sh" for rc-default: No such file or directory
init: rc-default main process (6910) terminated with status 255

These comments may help:

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?p=4906655

I tried a different version of Ubuntu (7), and got the same result. I also downloaded openSUSE and although I did not get the same message, it hung when trying to run it fromt he disk. Ran the memory and media checks for openSUSE and nothing. I am now running a disk check for Ubuntu. Hopefully this will work. Do you have any other suggestions? I really don't want to take the computer to the computer shop because they will charge outragerous ammounts of money and take a long time doing the work. Also, I really don't want to purchase another computer just to install Ubuntu or openSUSE. Thanks in advance for all the help you can provide. Cheers!

There are a lot of LiveCDs available. I've always had good luck with the old standby Knoppix - it seems to load on *almost* anything, in my experience. It could be an issue with the CD/DVD drive. Knoppix has some startup options that may help.

Are you simply attempting to install ubuntu? If you have windows installed and have an internet connection you can use unetbootin to do a net-installation, no CD required

http://unetbootin.sourceforge.net/

You can choose from many popular distributions. You download within windows and then double click it to install it, like you would with any other windows installation wizard. It then starts the net-installer, taking the packages off the internet instead of a CD.

unetbootin will install it to its own partition. If you don't want that you can use wubi, which will install it within the windows partition. You then start up the ubuntu as a windows application.

http://wubi.sourceforge.net/

Wubi is specific to ubuntu. Unetbootin lets you chose from many different distributions.

Maybe try unetbootin first, since you can choose from many distributions, if ubuntu does not work. If none work, try wubi, because it might make use of the windows drivers for your hardware, since it runs from within windows.

Hi, I'm a newbie to Linux as well - started using Ubuntu in dual-boot configuration with XP around April with no significant problems to date - smooth sailing so far. I hope you'll soon be able to enjoy the same.

I found something on segmentation faults that might help you to get some perspective on troubleshooting the problem.

http://aplawrence.com/Unixart/segmentation_fault.html

I suspect that your problem is likely to be with the Ram on your PC. When you load the live CD to try it out, Ubuntu actually resides on the Ram only, so if you get this error while simply running the live CD it's probably the case that you might need to run an error check of your system's Ram to make sure it's not failing. Ram is quite resilient so sometimes it's hard to notice when it begins to fail, but it does slowly fail over a period of years. In fact i found this out the hard way just this year, a month prior to installing Ubuntu. My XP system worked great at first but certain Ram-intensive software (esp. games, browser) began to crash when they never did before. It progressed to a variety of BSODs and eventual boot failure over the next month. Apparently, it was when the system was forced to use almost all the Ram that the failure began to be unmasked and impacted the system.

The article lists other hardware issues that might be a potential cause as well. If trying wubi, as suggested above, doesn't work, it would make a stronger case that Ram or other hardware issues are involved. I hope this helps.

If memory check came up ok and media check also came up ok then the problem most likely lies with the motherboard!
Can you give us all the info about your h/w?
motherboard/cpu/video card(s)/etc!

Also I recall that some older computers had a problem with the amount of ram that they reported to Linux.
The fix was to enter the amount of ram on the command line but this is not supported by all distros!

Have you tried a smaller distro like Damn Small or Puppy Linux running from a CD?

Other things to try a)specifying Vesa video mode, 2)turning off ACPI, apic, iommu and other stuff that I can't recall at this time.

ehawk:

If I try the http://unetbootin.sourceforge.net/, can I undo the chages made to the system? If the OS is successfully installed, how can I remove Windows so when the computer boots it will go straight to Ubuntu without having to go through the BIOS and select which system I want to use. I guess what I want to know is that once Ubuntu is installed, can I remove everything else so Ubuntu is the only OS without the need for unnecessary partitions? Thanks in advance for your help.

yes, during the net-installation process, you can install ubuntu to its own partition, separate from windows. At first, you will want to select to use grub as the boot manager, and then use it to boot into Ubuntu. After a trial run, if you think you can do without Windows, you can use the gnome partition editor to delete the windows partition and nondestructively merge the recovered disk space with the ubuntu partition. You can then also edit the grub.conf file to no longer offer windows as a boot option.

If you don't like ubuntu as installed, you can use gparted to instead delete the ubuntu partition and merge the recovered space with the windows partition, or leave that space unused so that you can install another linux distribution there and try again.

http://gparted.sourceforge.net/

There should be no problems, but it is always a good idea to backup important files elsewhere.

While we are at it, is there a place online where I can download a copy of a Linux or Ubuntu User Manual perhaps in PDF form?

Not in pdf:

http://ubuntuguide.org/wiki/Ubuntu:Intrepid

https://help.ubuntu.com/6.10/ubuntu/...e/C/index.html

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/UserDocumentation

Well, I think it is safe to say that I need to get a different computer in order to install linux. Now, I want to pass this one to my brother-law, so how do I use the GNU parted to remove everything that was created while trying to install Linux so when the computer boots again it does as it did before?

On a separate note, I noticed that DELL offers computes with ubuntu already installed. Are there any draw backs to their setups that you guys are aware of? As usual, thanks for your help.