Mandriva 2006 586 is 64bit??

Zeniq · 10-11-2005, 04:44 PM

I've used and enjoyed Mandrake 8.0 about 4 years ago but took a break from Linux since all my media dev apps required Windows. Last week I decided to put Linux back on my non-work machine and hearing about the new version (now Mandriva), I went to LinuxCentral to order Mandriva Linux 2006 (7 CD Set). It said it was for the "Intel" processor for which catagory listed other x86 distributions so I figured I was safe since I needed a 32bit distro.
I paid for 2nd day air (which was more than the cost of the CD's) and they just arrived today. Well to my disappointment:

The first CD was corrupt, unreadable, or blank in my CDRW drive. Fine, maybe it's a DVD.

The second CD was a boot disc and after pressing enter at the Linux prompt for installation, I was greeted with the message:

Your processor does not support long (something). Try a 32bit distribution.

I looked at the RPM contents of all 6 readable CD's and the filenames all contained 586 in them. Am I mistaken to think that 586 is for 32bit processors? If so, the site I ordered them from did not mention this and doesn't even list a second distribution for 64bit.

Or is the first CD NOT a DVD but a 32bit boot disc that actually is corrupt?
I'm on a 28.8 dialup connection and cannot spend months downloading ISO's so ordering them like this is my only option. There is no highspeed where I live.

ANY help would be very much appreciated.

tkedwards · 10-11-2005, 11:15 PM

Quote:

Your processor does not support long (something). Try a 32bit distribution.

From googling a bit on that it seems to be that the version on that disk is for 64-bit hardware.

Quote:

I looked at the RPM contents of all 6 readable CD's and the filenames all contained 586 in them. Am I mistaken to think that 586 is for 32bit processors? If so, the site I ordered them from did not mention this and doesn't even list a second distribution for 64bit.

No you're right. Looking at the mirrors for 2006 it looks like the 64-bit packages should have x86_64 in their names, not i586 ftp://ftp.proxad.net/pub/Distributio..._64/media/main

I'm not sure what the problem is but it'd be good to work out which CD (if any) of your working CDs is an install CD. To do this find the CD with a directory structure that looks a bit like this:

Code:

autorun.inf                        index.htm                          MD5SUM                             README.txt
COPYING                            install/                           media/                             release-notes.txt
Dkms/                              INSTALL.txt                        misc/                              VERSION
doc/                               isolinux/                          Modules/
dosutils/                          lang/                              pkg-10.2-Limited-Edition-2005.idx
Firmware/                          LICENSE.txt                        Plugins/

The above is the directory listing of the DVD equivalent of the 7CD version for 2005LE. There should be some files/directories like autorun.inf, index.hml, install.txt, isolinux that are only on the first CD, ie. the bootable installation CD. Find which one of your CDs has these.

Zeniq · 10-11-2005, 11:59 PM

That was one of the first things I checked. CD's 3 - 7 were all content and only the second CD was bootable. Which makes me wonder... if the second CD was the boot disc, then maybe the first one was a DVD? I don't have a DVD ROM drive and the burnable surface and label doesn't look any different from the rest of the discs. Even stranger, this same boot CD that's claiming to be 64bit is full of i586 RPM's. There are two main directories:

/Boot
cdrom-changedisk.img
boot.cat

/media
(empty)

/media/main2
(634 i586 RPM's)

/media/main2/media_info
synthesis.hdlist.cz
MD5SUM

I searched the net and couldn't find any other 7 CD versions of Mandriva 2006. In fact the only site I found within the US that has 2006 availible for order was a 4 CD set. Which version do I have?

Edited to add:

I just tried the boot CD on another computer with a newer Celeron CPU. I got the same message:

Your CPU does not support long mode. Use a 32bit distribution.

warpengi · 10-12-2005, 12:45 AM

Some Mandriva releases have a boot image on disk 2 as well as on disk 1. The boot image on disk 2 is for unusual configurations that won't boot off the 1st disk IIRC. I know I found that image really useful once although I don't remember the exact circumstances.

It sounds like your 1st disk is definitely DOA and your 2nd disk is wonky. Demand another copy from your supplier.

i586 means Pentium and higher, i686 means Pentium II and higher.

tkedwards · 10-12-2005, 12:51 AM

Quote:

Some Mandriva releases have a boot image on disk 2 as well as on disk 1. The boot image on disk 2 is for unusual configurations that won't boot off the 1st disk IIRC

That would make sense - the disk 2 in 2006 must be able to boot 64-bit only. Well that exaplains it then, just a bad CD1.

Zeniq · 10-12-2005, 01:42 PM

According to the site whom I finally got in touch with, they did in fact discover the first ISO to be bad and will ship out replacements to all who ordered that package. I guess the powerpack's second disc is to install the 586 package on 64bit machines. I'm considering this issue resolved.