I have a new Shuttle that Im working on installing Ubuntu.
I have been at this several days so Im a bit frustrated.

I have a sata 500gb hd that Im installing to, a ide 250gb hd with my old /home and, a sata cd drive.

I first tried to install via cdrom. The cd is good as I used it to install 9.04 on this laptop recently. The cdrom just wasnt being seen.

So I decided to use the USB create startup disk program and create a thumb drive. Upon install I had this problem: "The installer needs to commit changes to partition tables, but cannot do so because partitions on the following mount points could not be unmounted.: /cdrom

Please close any apps using these mount points.

Would you lik the installer to try to unmount these partitions again?"

I choose continue and it just starts the entire partitioning process again.

I shut down the machine and I unplugged the cdrom before doing this next run through. Same problem.

I have set the cdrom above the hd in the bios startup but it doesnt seem to make a difference. And the usb only is sceen every fourth or fifth boot time.

I've just run out of ideas on installing at this point.

Wade

Since last night I have tried some more things.

To test the cd drive out I changed around the hd and cd cables to check the cables.

I downloaded three more 9.04 iso's from different sites and none will burn to a disk. I have tried buring from several ubuntu machines and three window machines. All have problems at around the 2 to 5% mark with a general "write error". I had my neighbor also download and try to burn on his cd's (a different brand than mine) same issue on his computers (windows and linux). I installed another copy to my neighbors thumb drive and had the same "cant unmount cd" error.

If I werent having these problems myself I would think the person describing all these problems had broke out of some hospital --- there are just problems at every turn.

I have tried different computers, different burners, different cables.. I just cant make headway.

Apparently Im not the only one as I have posted in several forums and the responses I have received are things I have already tried or one guy just responded ...."scratching head... good luck".

Wade

Not sure about straight ubuntu-9.04
but Ultimate 2.2/2.3 I'm using as no issues at all from dvd or usb...

have you tried any other ubuntus besides the reg one?

I have not. I was thinking about trying out foresight linux... I moved up from 8.04 to 9.04 though. Maybe its time to look at 8.04 again or another version.

Wade

Other ones I've tried witout issue are wattOS, a "green" distro
http://www.planetwatt.com/

What Sata mode is set in your bios? Raid, ACPI, or IDE mode? If it's IDE mode, which is what Windows needs, try Raid mode. I don't mean use Raid, just set the Sata mode to Raid. Some Ubuntu disks seem to need that to boot.

SATA has two modes on mine: IDE chosen, AHCI.
Shuttle recommended AHCI but that did not help either.

Wade

Shuttle is trying to help me at least. From the list of things I have tried that I gave to them - they sent me three things to try. Unfortunately,nothing they have suggested worked.

I was FINALLY to get what I thought was the cd rom to boot:
BOOT from CD: ...
I think is the message on screen --- but it thought for a second and then went right on to the hd.

Wade

CRAP!!!! I got it.

Ok... didnt actually solve the problem but I fixed my situation.

Downloaded another 9.04 distro from outside the US.
Used yet another thumb drive.
Wrote to that.
Rebooted.
Hold ESC - boot menu - choose usb-fdd
Reboot
Hold DEL for bios
Look in hd - move the thumb drive to the top
reboot
Im in

Thanks for the help guys

Wade