Red Hat 9 Install Freezes
 

I am currently running a dual-boot between RH8 and XP Pro. I bought the RH9 Bible with all 3 CDs as well as a box set. I tried to install RH 9 via new box set and disk set from RH9 Linux Bible. Both will run to the point after recognizing components, then they show the bluecurve screen with the RH logo. At that point, keyboard lights go out, keyboard and mouse go dead. System completely freezes. Have tried waiting up
to 5 hours for the system to respond, but to no avail. I have also tried a text install, as well as a noprobe install and unplugging
peripherals. Results remain the same. It probes for and finds my video card, mouse, monitor, etc. then goes to a black screen with an "X" for the cursor followed by the blue screen with the Red Hat logo with a black cursor and freezes. And just to think, I was trying to get away from the Blue Screen of Death, and ended up just trading it for a different one. :rolleyes:
I have posted to the RH Support page, but still no response on that front.
I am hoping to move away from M$, and have sampled Mandrake 9/9.1 and RH8, now hoping for RH9. Looking for a distro that will give me numerous easily useable features that would work out of the box on both my laptop and desktop. Have no aversion to researching info or spending hours reading to learn, but summer classes start tomorrow at college and time will become a scarce commodity (looking at 6 hours worth of homework per day per class).
Sorry for digressing. Out of all 3 distros this is my first time requesting assistance, all of my other questions were able to be answered by reading the posts of others since I was of the opinion that Linux Gurus preferred self-reliance.
Ahhh, more digressing.
I'll shut up now.

If you already have RH8 working, and RH9 freezes, then I would have to wonder if there is a problem with the disks you got with the book. I have seen others experience this problem. If you have the resources, download and burn your own 3 CD's and try those.

(side-note) If you just do the workstation install, you can get away with the first 2 usually.

Imagine that! But, If everyone Read The F[reakin||riendly] Manual and previous posts, then we wouldn't have any new posts. :)

Thank you for the reply!!!
Unfortunately, I already tried using the set that I bought in the box set as well as the set that came with the book, with the same results. Any other suggestions?
Oh, and lest I forget, I was able to get into the screen to check the disks at one point and both sets checked out fine (that disk checker is a nice little tool to start the installation with). Is it likely that both sets would be bad and not show as such?

I had the same problem do you happen to have firewire on your system?

Yes, I do, but I disconnected the DVD-RAM drive that was plugged into it. How did you resolve the issue?

Doh!, must've overlooked that in you post.

I would be interested in this firewire problem, my laptop has firewire and RH8 currently. Had thought about doing RH9, but I may wait and see how this pans out. Besides, I am out of CD-R's to burn a copy.

I'm having the same problem. I have no firewire on my system, however. I have an older Celeron 300a system that I'm installing to. Anyway, I can't use my mouse or keyboard with X at all. I tried the graphical installation with no luck. So then I did text-mode installation. now when it boots, as soon as X starts my keyboard & mouse stop!!

Any ideas?

Casio,
Does not sound like you are having the same problem to me. What you are experiencing sounds like a video card problem. This post is a "Install Freezes" problem. You said that when you do a text install, that it works.

Try searching for your video card in the forums, and if you don't find anything, try posting a new thread with the details about your system and the problems you are experiencing.

I till this day have not got RH9 to work correctly with the Firewire on my laptop cause there is nowere I can go to disable it in the laptop bios and on load it just locks up trying to load firewire...what I did on my desktop was install using text mode then recompile the kernel to disable firewire.

sorry... I hit submit to soon

on thing I did find tho after working with redhat 9 is how much I like 7.3 so much better to me just seems so much more stable...for Red Hat that is. For a laptop with firewire unless you can disable firewire in you bios I would suggest RedHat 7.3 it was alot less headace for me anyway. And much faster right from the get go with out the need for major tweaking. Like the later versions of Red Hat.

Red Hat support replied today, but their advice was:

"For the meantime try to boot in run level 3 and see if this solve the issue. To boot in run level 3 do the following in the GRub menu:

_1. Select the desired kernel.
_2. Press the [e] key to edit that entry.
_3. Use the arrow keys to navigate to the kernel line (for example: kernel
/vmlinuz-2.4.7-1 ro root=/dev/hda2)
_4. Press the [e] key to edit the line.
_5. Add the argument 3 to the end of the line and press [Enter]. (for example:
kernel /vmlinuz-2.4.7-1 ro root=/dev/hda2 3)
_6. Press the [b] key to boot."

Evidently they misunderstood my problem, they were speaking as though I already had it installed.

Just on a whim I wiped out MDK 9.1 and Win Server 2003 on my laptop to try RH9 on it. It installed just fine(albeit extremely slow, considering it has 512 MB of RAM and a 1.3 GHz Athlon Processor - not the fastest setup but not the slowest either). Did an "Everything" Server install. Works great! Unfortunately, it does not have firewire, so not the greatest test.

I clarified my situation for them to the best of my ability to make certain there would be no further confusion, as well as submitting a full SANDRA 2002 system analysis report for my system.
I also mentioned the possibility of firewire being a problem to see what their response is.
I even uninstalled the Win XP hard drive on my desktop, and wiped out the RH 8 drive to give it a clean install on a "blank" computer. (Thinking a TRIOS II would be a good investment if I am going to keep sampling OSes.)
It was a waste of time, the results were the same.

Thank you for the suggestion LoungLizard. Next I shall try removing the firewire card if I can't disable it in BIOS. (It is a Compaq and the BIOS options are somewhat limited compared to the Dells and Tangents I work on at school.)

Hope we can get it figured out so you'll know what to try with your laptop jdc2048.

PS LoungeLizard - Did you have to tweak/patch the kernel to get power management and batstat to work on your laptop with RH9?

Thell_S,
My batstat works fine with RH8, don't know if that helps or not.

Power management is a little flaky. The screen will blank out after a while, but the LCD backlight stays on. And forget closing the lid, doesn't do a thing. *

* disclaimer. - I did not finish the configuration to make apmd or whatever work when closing the lid. apmd was running, I had the hidden partition (twice memory + 6, or whatever it was), but that was as far as I got.

No, I did not have to do any tweaking to get Power Managemet or Bastat to work.

Success!!! This one little command (from Red Hat Support) is what did the trick and got it to install:
linux nofirewire nousb ide=nodma text
So I guess it proves LoungeLizard correct. If I understand correctly, the command temporarily disabled not only firewire, but USB and DMA as well. Time to do more research and find out for certain.Now all I have to do is figure everything out and get it all set up.

Thank you gentlemen, for all of your input, I appreciate it. Now to finish my Trig homework (150 problems, yuck) before I can start having fun playing with my new OS.

Again, thank you!!! I know now that if I can't get this version configured the way that I want it on my laptop, I can try RH8, or 7.3 as a failsafe. I also know that 7.3 is considered to be more stable and easier to set up.

Hopefully, in return, I will be able to assist soomeone else with what I have learned via my adventures into MDK 9/9.1, RH8 and now 9.