Ubuntu freezes after logging in
 

after taking a friends advice I've been tried to install Ubuntu Linux 5.04 on my second hard drive (80GB), but it won't work (even after 4 tries).

Except for the first and last tries at installing it, the installation has gone straight to the end without a problem, it just won't reboot. It says it's installed the GRUB boot loader but when it reboots at the end of the install, it boots windows. I have list of a few things that I might have done wrong that could have stuffed up the installation. It's a long-ish list so make sure you have a bit of time. Some of the answers may seem a bit obvious, but i'm a bi of a newbie

First off, which 'locale' should I use? en_AU.UTF-8 or just en_AU? (I live in Australia, by the way)
Should I enable PCIMCA? I said no to that
After that it said that it could not load the modules ide-mod (Linux IDE driver), ide-probe-mod (Linux IDE probe driver), ide-detect (Linux IDE detection), ide-floppy (Linux IDE floppy)
It also said that simply proceeding with the install may make them available later.
It was unable to load them ,again, when detecting network hardware

What is my primary network interface? eth0 which is the one connected to the internet, or eth1 which is connected to the LAN?

When I'm repartitioning the hard drive what partition table should I use? I chose MSDOS, is that okay? What are primary and logical partitions?

Which kernel should I load? linux-amd64-generic, linux-image-amd64-generic, or linux-image-2.6.10-5-amd64-generic. (I use an AMD64 3000+)I chose the first one

Should I add another apt-source?

The rest works fine, except when it reboots. It's supposed to use GRUB to give me a choice between linux and windows, but it just loads Windows automatically.
Thank you in advance,
Masonmop

OK....I'm assuming your Windows hard drive is the primary master and the Ubuntu one is the primary slave. Am I correct?

First of all, download any AMD64 linux live CD (It HAS to be AMD64 or x86_64, 32 bit will not work). Boot into it and then open a terminal. At the terminal type this

su

fdisk -l /dev/hda

fdisk -l /dev/hdb

If you are using SCSI hard drives and not IDE, then change those commands to these

fdisk -l /dev/sda

fdisk -l /dev/sdb

Post the output of both commands (whichever set you use).

I don't know why, but for some reason the Live CD doesn't work. I go through all the steps, and it goes to the splash screen where it says "Ubuntu" "Linux for human beings" and then it freezes, the mouse won't move. Nothing. I don't see why it isn't working, I have a gig of ram, that's more than enough.
One thing I noticed just before the splash screen came up, when there were all the white letters on a black background, it couldn't find the system clock. Second of there was a 'temporary failure in resolution' or something like that. I don't know exactly what my graphics card is, but it's an ATI Radeon X600 series. I know the series but not the exact model. So if you could help me with that I would be really grateful.
Thank you in advance, again
Masonmop

The Ubuntu distro is great, but their live CD's are awful. Use Knoppix AMD64/x86_64 edition. It will work just as well.

I'm sorry, but I can't download knoppix (even though I have broadband it has a 1 gig limit, and we generally use it up). I think it may be a problem with grub. The installation goes okay, but it won't boot. Isn't booting the job of Grub? Usually when I install grub in the default place, it won't work, so I tried installing it on a floppy. All it could manage was writing Grub on the screen, underneath all the white writing on a black background. I haven't tried installing it in all the places the installer offers, but I will eventually!
I'll post updates tomorrow

Masonmop

es, but the live cd allows you to diagnose and fix problems with grub. Download Puppy Linux. You can find it with Google. It is a 60 MB Live CD. So it isn't a huge download. Post back when you get it....if you get it :p

I don't know why, but only the hard drive that i tried to install linux on worked with that fdisk thing. Also it was /dev/hdc for some reason, not /dev/hda (I don't know why).

This is what came up when I typed fdisk -l /dev/hdc

Disk /dev/hdc: 80GB, 80054059008 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 9732 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 x 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks ID System
/dev/hdc1 * 1 9361 75192201 83 Linux
/dev/hdc2 9362 9732 2980057+ 5 Extended
/dev/hdc3 9362 9732 2980026 8 Linux swap/ Solaris


(When I wrote this I put lots of spaces between the columns so that the columns lined up, but they were deleted when I posted)

Well which device is your main windows harddrive? Is it an SCSI device by any chance??? It might be sda then.

My Windows drive is a SCSI device, but (I don't know why) it isn't called sda. It didn't do anything.

Try /dev/uda.

Also, find out the chipset of your Windows SCSI device and see if it might be one of the few unsupported ones for Linux (I'm not sure if there are even any, but who knows).

If that is the case, then you would have to use a LiveCD to chroot into your Linux system. (Ask me and I'll let you know how to do this if you want to try). You would then install grub to the mbr of your second harddrive, and set your second harddrive as the boot device in your bios.

Before we get into that, could you please post your /boot/grub/menu.lst from your Ubuntu installation, NOT from the livecd. Thx

I too have a boot problem.

I've just installed kubuntu, with grub over my old debian sarge installation. As far as I can tell, that went fine. Problem is, I can't get into there because GRUB hasn't overwritten my LILO boot loader from debian :( Of course, when you select linux from there the install it's pointing to no longer exists so it doesn't really do much but insult your mother.

Any ideas?

f1dave : use a live cd and mount your kubuntu partition and chroot into it like this.

mkdir /mnt/kubuntu
mount /dev/hdxx /mnt/kubuntu
(At this point, mount any other partitions inside the kubuntu one, for instance, if you set up a home partition, you would mount it like this.)
mount /dev/hdxx /mnt/kubuntu/home

Now you mount the proc filesystem like this.

mount -t proc none /mnt/kubuntu/proc

Now you change into the kubuntu environment like this.

chroot /mnt/kubuntu

now you should be logged into the root user on kubuntu, but with no X for kubuntu).

Now install grub to the mbr by doing this

grub-install /dev/hda

then get out of the chroot, unmount all of the partitions and reboot, let me know if it worked.

(replace hdxx and hda at the end with the proper partition and disk letters and numbers)

thanks... guess i shall have to start a livecd download now :(

I'll get back to you in 6 hours or so :S

The kubuntu installation CD might work too. Just wait till your first installation question pops up, hit CTRL+ALT+F3 and you should be at a terminal.

Found something even better- i'm using an old knoppix disc i found, and doing it from there.