I want to pass a parameter to the kernel before beginning installation of Mandriva 2009 RC1 but the text screen where you do that, the one that appears right after booting to an installation cd or dvd, only appears briefly, less than a second, before the gui screen is displayed. I can hit the pause button on my keyboard if I am quick enough and hold the text screen there, but as soon as I start to type in something, the display switches to the gui and I haven't been able to enter my parameter or even enter "text" for text mode install. Has anybody been able to enter use the initial text screen for anything ? Its always worked on previous versions of mandriva and mandrake. I realize this is a release candidate, not the official release but I was wondering if I was the only one with this problem or not.

Hi, there's 2 ways around this, and some reasons for this behaviour.

When the grub screen(gui) comes up, press an arrow key to pause the timer.

Then you may be able to access the "kernel-command-line" (this is not usually a cli ,white text on black, dos-like screen)
but just a line near the bottom where you can add to the kernel parameters. F2 key afaik.

If that is not addressing your question, you may need to change the pause-time, you can do this after the OS boots into the full blown GUI. Goto "configure my computer" and to boot options, be careful, any wrong changes may bork your kernel boot.

You can also change the graphical interface, like, silent, verbose or text.

see how you go, regards Glenn.

Thanks glenns but I think you and I are taking about two different things. It sounds like you're talking about the screen you boot to on an installed system, where you choose the type of boot you want to do, usually "linux (vmlinuz), fail safe or other, with a timer counting down and you use an arrow key to stop the timer.

What I am talking about is when you don't yet have linux installed and you are booting to the cd or dvd, there is a temporary black screen with text that appears and it usually sits there until you either just press enter, or enter a kernel parameter at the bottom of the screen and press enter to continue to the next screen which is the mandriva-blue installation choices screen, that lets you choose a regular or "text only" installation, and this may be the one you are talking about also, but I am talking about the black screen immediately before this one. Instead of sitting there until I press enter or enter kernel parameters, it just flashes by in an instant, you can barely make out what it is, and takes you to the mandriva-blue installation choices screen.

I hope that is a little bit clearer.

Have you tried pressing F3?

Yes, I thought that that black screen, before the install-disk's grub screen.

I have seen it momentarily <some red lettering with the others> but Have never accessed it, it flashes by to fast..

I think, I could be wrong, that is just the cdrom boot loader (as you say), configuring your screen size or something before the grub-gui comes up.

As Nexus has written...see how you go, Glenn