I am almost ready to give up on Linux!!

Nothing but problem after problem trying to install the Mandrake 10.1 OS.

I've repartitioned my drive now for the second time. First install somehow corrupted my partitions!

The installation went ok on the second try after doing some repartitioning on the HD. No problems. GRUB bootloader is now on dev/hda1 which is an NTFS partition. I read somewhere that it needs to be on the first partition of the first HD and that is NTFS format because I intend on installing mult OS adding Win XP, so GRUB got written there. Is that ok? loader seems to works fine. /root is on hda2 which was formated as a ext2 partition.

I just tried a third clean install today and still it won't run!

Here is what happens...

After selecting "Linux" in GRUB, the Mandrake bootup splash screen appears and the load bar goes 1/8 and freezes!

What is wrong?!?! Do i need to download another installation OS??
Are my partitions wrong? I intend on

Lilo or Grub should be installed on the FIRST hard drive's boot sector.

That is, the drive that your system will be booting from and the very first sectors on the drive. /dev/hda (if it's an IDE drive) or /dev/sda (if it's a SCSI drive).

The problem is that other OS's, such as Windows XP, will overwrite this sector when they are installed.

What you should do is FIRST install the "other" OS so that it will not overwrite the boot sectors after the Linux install.

Once you have XP running, then install Mandrake 10.1.

BTW: You mentioned /dev/cda

What type of drive do you have?

That was a typo. Sorry, I corrected it. I meant dev/hda1.

In the Mandrake install it asked me where I want to install the bootloader and it gave the option to have it on dev/hda2 partition- (which is the /root partition). will it work there? I thought it had to be on the very first sectors of the first partition of the first HD ??

Anyway it's currently installed on dev/hda1. I checked this by going into 'rescue mode' and trying the "over-write with windows bootloader" function and had found that I had two bootloaders 1. dev/hda1 2. dev/hda2. So when I re installed this last time I chose "skip" on the bootloader installation menu so that it would over write dev/hda2 which is /root location. This is so there wouldn't be any conflicts by having two bootloaders.

Yes, i actually did install win XP first, the first time and the linux install corrupted my HD somehow and so I repartitioned and formatted the HD. I just want to get Mandrake running. Can't I re write the GRUB loader to the same boot sector later after XP is installed? All i need is GRUB. I don't need the NTLDR correct??

sorry, i'm new at all this .

Maybe it would help if I explained how I partitioned my HD...

part.
1- primary NTFS (allocated for XP)
2- primary ext2 for Linux
3-extened- with virtual partitions a. xp swap file b. linux swap c. xp programs d. linux programs

You do not want the bootloader on the first partition.

Rather you want it part of the master boot record instead.

In other words, when your system starts up it will load the Lilo/grub bootloader from where you can select your XP or Mandrake OS.

This passes the boot sequence onto the OS boot kernels for each respective OS directly. Grub/Lilo takes over the boot process which is also why Mandrake must be installed last.

Lilo/Grub will pass control to the NTLDR during the boot.

So re-install Windows, reformatting your entire drive (preferably after zeroing out the existing partitions using Linux's own fdisk...)

Then set things up the way you want with Mandrake, but during the install make sure that you do NOT install Lilo/Grub to the partitions.

Thanks for the help. I really appreciate it. But I have determined that my copy of Mandrake is obviously bad!!

As you advised...

I re formatted the HD and installed win xp first. Everything went smooth as butter. Then I rebooted from the mandrake install disk and installed it. Install went smooth. no problems. It automatically put the Lilo on dev/hda. I changed it to Grub. Then it asked if I wanted to download and install the latest updates...i said yes. Next screen said congratulations on your install of mandrake, remove disk and reboot. What????? it didn't install any updates!! Oh well. I reboot. Grub begins. I choose Linux. what happens?? same thing as has happend the last 3 times. mandrake bootup screen, loader bar 1/8 and it hangs up forever.

Now i have to download another 3 disk files from internet and reburn everything and hope it works or else i give up on Linux and will have no good things to say about it ever! and I will forever be a slave to microsoft but at least I won't be frustrated out of my mind with an OS that can't even sucessfully install itself!!


Sincerely,

pissed off

I'm finished downloading the first CD from ftp://mirrors.secsup.org/pub/linux/m...iso/10.1/i586/

it's a download site link from http://www.linuxiso.org

Thank heavens for cable broadband!!

One extra side note before i try to install mandrake for the 5th time...

on this last install i did, under partitioning section, i went to 'advanced' and created a 2gb /root partition and a 1.6 gb linux swap partition. I did NOT create a /home partition. I figured I could allocate space later for this if I needed more space for additional programs. Is that a problem?? Could that also be why it didn't download the updates for me??

Your original disk may not be bad, but rather you may be seeing a problem elsewhere.

When the boot screen appears AFTER selecting Linux, with the moving bar... hit ESC.

This shows you what's going on.

Tell me where it stops.

To answer your question... given your configuration I'd allocate an XP, SWAP and root partition and nothing else.

This makes it easier to later add another disk at say a /home mount point w/o having to re-install or copy a large number of files.

Possibly yet another apic/acpi problem.
When you get the grub menu press "e" and on the kernel line press "e" again.
Go to the "acpi=ht" and change it to "acpi=off noapic nolapic" (if you don't have it got to the end of the line).
Press "b" to boot.

If that works, edit /boot/grub/menu.lst and make those changes.

The upgrade part usually fails (for me anyway). That's mostly due to an overloaded ftp mirror.
You can always upgrade afterwards.

- Peder

Yup, that's probably right.

I'd like for him to report what he sees during boot though.

Hey thanks friends. I'll check all that when i get home on my computer and report back. Right now I'm at work. I don't know anything about the apic/acpi problem. Is it a common problem?? Seems like it must be. There must be many ppl with this problem eh??

I added my computer specs to my signature finally. I have completed downloading 3 more cd images of the Mandrake 10.1 Community Edition OS. and burned the images onto CD. I verified the download md5 checksum numbers and they matched the reference ones given so the images did download ok and I have a perfect copy. BTW- which is better the Community edition or the Official ??? They had both there for download.

I'll try the things you mentioned and if it fails I'll install these other cd's as a final try.

Community is the beta release which then evolves into Official.
So Official is the one to choose.

- Peder

opjose, ok the boot up hangs up on this line

...checking root filesystem


hope that helps. my next step is I will try what Peder said and hopefully that will work.

Peder,

I am sad to report that your advise did not work. I made the edit exactly as you advised. "acpi=off noapic nolapic"
I hit escape to get into 'verbose' mode and still it stops on "checking root filesystem"

Here is how the grub edit line read before edit-

grub edit> kernel (hd0,4) /boot/vmlinuz root=/dev/hda5 acpi=ht resume=/dev/hda6 splash=silent vga=788


I guess i will try installing this 10.1 Community edition or download 10.1 Official and give it a last try

Do you have a "failsafe" entry at boot?

Can you choose it and see what happens?