Installing for first time...need help...
 

I'm very new to Linux, (once I get it to run) and I am trying to duel-boot Redhat 8.0 and XP...I have a single hard drive, with 4 partitions. I've installed it (and reinstalled several times), and when it's done install, I go to boot Redhat, and it starts to boot, until I get to the point where it says

Init: Version 2.84 booting

...at which point it hangs, and goes no further. I talked to a few of my friends who know linux, and they're stumped. I tried reinstall it with a few different options selected, etc., and the problem is always exactly the same.

If anyone can help me get this thing going, that'd be great...:Pengy:

Welcome to LQ, Gaccookie. Do you have an athlon processor? I tried to install RH 7.3 a while ago and only discovered the append=noathlon (or whatever) to get it to work on mine.

Oh, and this is going to sound extremely rude of me, but:
Duel- or dual-boot? I'm sorry if that sounds rude, but I've noticed lots of people using the wrong one and thought that this would be a good place to make the point. Thanks.

command??
 

As a matter of fact, I do have an Athlon. Where do I run that command??

By the way....don't worry about the correction. I should have caught that one myself. :(

On installing, when you get to the bit where you're setting up your bootloader, you need to edit the kernel parameters bit. You can fiddle about with booting, editing, running, booting again, or you could just re-install (you have nothing to lose... yet :)) and read the bumph that's displayed when it's installing the packages... I believe the noathlon bit is right down the bottom of the readme bit, but I'd still advise reading through it all.

still not booting...
 

I've tried noathlon, nopentium, and any number of varieties and derivations of those. My friends who have looked at it don't seem to think that it's a conflict with the processor, but they also tell me that I should be having this much trouble just getting it started.

Anyone have other ideas??

Thanks

When partitioning your harddisk, did you put the give it a serperate /boot partition? If not, is the / partition on ext2 or ext3 or reiser? Sometimes if the kernel and/or init files are on an ext3 or reiser partition it will fail to initialise and so won't boot.

boot partition
 

should the boot partition go at the very front of the disk? How big does it need to be?

sorry...I should clarify...

right now, this is what I'm doing with the HD...

I've got 4.6 gigs ext3, for RH
then, 400 megs for swap
then, 5 gigs NTFS, for XP

then, I'll eventually format the rest of the disk to use for data storage...I have another drive that is formatted FAT 32, and that's where all of my data and program files are right now.