I can't get Suse to install I've even used "safe mode" (forgot what it was called)

it gets up to the stage where it says 1% (or in safe mode 2%)
but then nothing happens...............*waits*....................then I see the HDD light on my case light up is usual red colour (i'm australian). but I can't hear or see anything happen... I leave it for 1-3 min but to no success...... so I have to hold down the power button and shutdown.......


I really want Linux.... the only distro that "worked" was knoppix.. but I couldn't compile Rpm's so it was pretty usless..... Please Help!

Steven

please use a suitable thread title next time. what would have been wrong with "New suse install unable to boot succesfully, just hangs" or something like that?

sorry

Firstly you may have to wait more than 1-3 minutes. the installation will take 1-2 hours depending on your setup. give it 15-20 minutes then you'll know if it's hung or not.

Secondly if you are using the install disk to format the partitions, don't. Suse 9.1 had a problem where if you tried to change the format of the partition or if you just wanted to clear old data on a partition the installation would hang on 1%. use QTParted, a copy should be on knoppix 3.6, set up and format the partitions from this. Then use the Suse installation disk and you should find the install goes without a hitch...

hmmm... I left it 20 minutes and still hung... but I think it might be "that" (see above) So I'll try doing "that" then.
Um... but can you sort of tell me what to do?

Like what FS is SWAP.. and ROOT?

And can I do it in Partition Magic? (8.0)

Help? It still hangs on 1% but the HDD light is on....... (as above)

First and foremost, I think you need to post your hardware specs. Be as detailed as possible. For all anybody knows, you may have a motherboard/controller or other piece of hardware that is unsupported/hard to get working.


Info that will help:

CPU
RAM
Motherboard
Motherboard Chipset (ie VIA/Intel/Nvidia/SiS)
HDD size (and how they are connected, SATA/PATA)



Hopefully somebody can give you more specifics after this info is posted.


HTH
PmCode

CPU: Athlon Xp 2800+
RAM: 1024mb
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA7N400 PRO 2
Motherboard Chipset (ie VIA/Intel/Nvidia/SiS) I'll find that out next restart
HDD size (and how they are connected, SATA/PATA): 120g SATA (has a raid controller for IDE and SATA but not used)

OK this what I did:

step 1 - use any patition software if you feel it is reliable. I used QTparted because it was free and came on a linux rescue DVD and allowed me to format partitions in both ReiserFS (for SuSE) and FAT32/NTFS windowsMe/windowsXP.

step 2 - Decide how you want to partition the hard drive now. You are only able to partition the drive into 4 main parts, one of these will then be able to be sub-partitioned. e.g I partitioned my hard drive into hdf1 (30GB), hdf2 (1GB), hdf3(40), hdf4(49GB) (120GB total hard drive space). Because I boot from a secondary drive (hde) all I then need the SuSE installer to do is label them (hdf1 is the root partition, hdf2 is the swap and doesn't need to be more than 1GB as it only swaps temporary data)

step 3 - once you've finalised the partitioning and formatting - don't forget SuSE requires reiserfs partitions - go to the suse installation. The installation will decide how it wants to install - the defaults are normally root partition will be the largest on your hard drive and shown with "/"
swap partition will be the smallest and shown with "/swap". you'll have to use the custom option if this does not tally with reiserfs partition. Just make sure that the root partition is labelled with "/".

step 4 - choose your boot loader - I use lilo just because it has the least amount of options on it. I have never used GRUB so I can't give an opinion on it. All I will say is that if you do need windows as well install it first. You'll also have to decide which hard drive to boot from if you have more than one.

step 5 - choose which packages/programs you want to have in the installation - not vital as you can always use yast after the installation.

all the other defaults should be fine to work with so you shouldn't need to alter them.

You may need to configure linux but only do this after installation to optimise it for your particular hardware.

Hi,

Count yourself lucky that you even get to 1% I have a SiS 964 SATA controller and
160Gb disk (not RAID) and I can't even get the sodding installer to recognise that I
have a disk attached. This is despite the installer automagically loading the sis_sata module
without me asking. Hhhmmm, I've loaded the module, now what might that be for?

I *still* can't find a good source of info on how to install SuSE with SATA disks - please,
anyone if you know of a howto, scrap of paper, whatever, with instructions, let us know!

Cheers, Jon.

Any help? I might just give up on linux........

I finally got it to work - and the solution was to have a look in the BIOS. There I found an option to select the mode of the SATA controller, it was initially set to "IDE" and I changed this to "RAID". I'm not sure why this prompted the linux installer to start recognising things, but it did. Immediately after I made that change, and rebooted the installer started detecting "Foxconn blah, blah USB controller", "Foxconn foobar blah" etc etc. It then did detect a disk which it could install on to.

Note that because I only have 1 disk, it is not configured as a RAID set - so I'm not sure what the real difference is....?

More generally, I always use custom partitioning - and create a /boot (100MB) partition at the start, then a swap partition (twice the size of the installed RAM), then you could have the rest of the disk as one big "/" ("root partition") - or chop it up as you please.

Have a look in the BIOS and see if there's anything that looks connected to RAID/SATA configuration - and have a play - it won't do any harm.

Good luck, Jon

Steveni

I would also check as, skunkcabbage has said, the mode that the SATA controller is set to. I know that the PATA raid can be used as either RAID or just an IDE controller, and I think the SATA can be set the same. I have my PATA raid set as just an extra IDE controller, as I only have one disk on it right now.

I have the same mobo as you do, BTW.....


HTH....

hmm.... well.. I'll try that then... maybe this afternoon.. when I have time... and thanks!

I tried it and guess what?

It was already set to "RAID" so what could it be?