Redhat, Mandrake or Debian??? 4

[KimLeece]

Hi all,
I have recently downloaded the iso's for redhat 8.0. Unfortunately the machine crashes completely almost as soon as the install starts - the machine is a Gateway Profile with a AMD K-6 proc. I am now wondering if I might do better with one of the other distributions - and so would like to know which one is likely to be the best?

The install I have tried so far has included trying "linux noprobe" - "linux askmethod" - "linux lowres" - but they all crash. The CD boots the machine OK - it generally gets as far as the PC Card page. The furthest it got was something to do with anaconda!

The only error message that I have seen is:
cannot allocate region 4 of device: 00.07.1 (is that the problem?)

I am totally new to Linux so would appreciate any advice/help with this!

Thanks in advance,

Kim Leece.

p.s. At the moment the operating system on the hard drive is Win XP - I intend to let Linux re-format/partition the whole disk - if it ever gets that far!

 

[RhythmAce]

For some reason, RedHat doesn't install very well with K-6. I think it has something to do with the way it uses the cpu memory. I seem to remember that RH suggests you disable it. You may be better off with another distro. You don't know how hard it was for me to say that. I am RedHat to the bone.

 

[KimLeece]

RythmAce - Thanks for the reply - I'll try another one.
If I disabled the K-6 it seems to me I wouldn't have much left!!!

Kim Leece.

 

[smah]

Kim, try mandrake - it should install fine. Might be a little slow with a K6, but should work. Don't forget to install Apache

 

[KimLeece]

Thanks Smah-
I was just going to download Debian - but I'll follow your advice and let you know!

Kim

 

[KimLeece]

Smah -
Well I tried - but it crashes just like the RH - I see a few error messages early on - but they go by so fast I can't really read them and @pause@ doesn't do anything! I do see some message that suggests that I might need to use a boot disk with "other.img" - there seems to be a problem with something to do with ide-0. I also get a message that I will need some proprieatry drivers - but it doesn't say for what hardware! There definately seems to be a hardware clash of some kind - but it's very hard to see what. This is actually a K6-2 processor - 256Meg ram PC66. As you know I'm totally new to this and this is proving to be a very difficult introduction!!!! The machine I'm trying to do this on is "spare" that's why I can experiment - it ran XP fine, so I'm running out of ideas fast - I have even removed all partitions to let Linux have total control - but that also didn't work. I have Partition magic - so if I would be better with a Linux partition already in place I could try that - any ideas?

Kim

 

[smah]

Right at the moment, Mandrake probably has the best installer out there. According to the hardware compatability chart, your K6-2 should work even if it's only 200MHz. You may want to verify some of your other hardware here:

http://www.linux-mandrake.com/en/hardware.php3

Did you verify the MD5 sums to make sure everything is OK with the iso's you downloaded?

 

[Riaan]

This may or may not be relevant, but RH 7.3 and 8.0 have a mediacheck option which allow you to verify the integrity if you burned a CD from a downloaded ISO. If the verification passes, you know that the media is fine, and the CD-ROM can read it correctly (I have had issues with 5-year old Compaq servers which are unable to read burned CD 2 and 3 because the CDs were in a 750MB format, which the CD-ROM drives could not read completely)

(since both Red Hat and Mandrake have issues, I do not think that Red Hat is you problem)

Did you tweak anything in the BIOS? Perhaps some aggressive memory or other setting prevents you from installing successfully

Try memtest (

http://www.memtest86.com/

) to verify that the memory on a PC is fine.

Riaan van Niekerk
Unix sysadmin & groupie
Potchefstroom University
South Africa

 

[KimLeece]

Checking the hardware listings I've noticed that many hardware components are certified for earlier versions of Linux than I have downloaded - could this be the problem?
I have now downloaded RH 8.0 and Mandrake 9.0 - should I perhaps have used earlier releases - for instance would the kernels then be different?
Actually the machine is itself a bit strange - a Gateway Profile is basically a complete unit with everything built on to the back of the screen - so it is actually similar in design to a laptop. Therefore I cannot check the motherboard (it's probably a special design anyway). I suspect that the DVD ROM drive also is not always stable - although Mandrake recognized and used it seemingly ok. I cannot do much in the Bios - or find a upgrade for it (PhoenixBios version 14) I have reset defaults - no effect - selected "other os" (one choice for if you don't want to use windows) - no effect. There are no settings for tweaking so I don't think it can be that. I haven't checked the disks yet - but will today.
I'm actually thinking of selling this machine and building a new server now as I was never going to use this as a server anyway - it was more to look at Linux and learn something about it before I went the whole hog! I would like to make it work though - I hate it when a computer won't do what I want - after all it's only 1's and 0's!

Kim

 

[KimLeece]

I have now downloaded the MD5 sums - how do I use them to verify the Mandrake iso's?
thanks,
Kim.

 

[smah]

Here's a windows program you can use:

http://www.toast442.org/gl/public_html/staticpages/index.php?page=20020828141406760

And a little theory if you're interested:

http://perlmonks.thepen.com/50831.html

 

[KimLeece]

Thanks Smah - the iso's are good - both RH and Mandrake - it's not that! I'll probably have to build a new machine -
Kim.

 

[venkman]

You might want to give suse a try. I've been using Redhat for the past year, but just installed suse 2 days ago and have found its hardware detection of peripherals to be slightly better than redhat. Granted this is isn't extremely pertinent to your problem, but perhaps its detection of all hardware is better? Also, I've heard that mandrake and redhat are very similar to each other. If this is true then they might exhibit the same types of issues that other distributions like suse or debian would not. Debian might also be good, but I haven't tried it before so I don't know how easy it is to install. Does anyone know if another kernel would be better? Maybe kernel 2.2 rather than 2.4 (the latest) would work better?

Just thought I would make some suggestions. Usually, linux is applauded for its ability to run on various hardware configurations that Windows would normally have difficulty with. That's why I have trouble believing there is not a way to get linux installed on your machine.

-Venkman

 

[KimLeece]

Ok - I'd like to say thank you to all of you for your help!
I have - sort of- fixed the problem! first of all the early attempts at RH 8.0 totally messed up my harddrive MBR - neither fdisk or partition magic could fix it and it took a really useful bit of information to clean the MBR completely that I found at:

http://www.winntmag.com/Articles/Index.cfm?ArticleID=5327&pg=1

I then downloaded Mandrake 8.2 - it also crashed a few times but finally installed using the noauto method - it then booted - sometimes - and ran for a bit, only to crash again - this time producing lots of disk errors due to mounted drives terminating incorrectly!
So I then downloaded Debian! It installed first time - no crashes - some of the packages didn't install - but that appears to be more to do with bugs in the software than anything else and will probably be fixable. It runs perfectly (although I still haven't got much of a clue how to use it!) It hasn't crashed once - not in install - not while running - brilliant!
Now it's all just a question of me learning a new OS -

Again - thank you all for your time and attention -

Kim.

"If at first you don't succeed - try, try and try again!" - Robert Bruce.

 

[danielhozac]

venkman,
Just a FYI note, 2.4 isn't the latest kernel, the latest is 2.5. Though that is still in beta. //Daniel

 

[venkman]

Daniel,

As far as I'v always heard it 2.4 is the latest stable release, 2.5 is under development/beta. And 2.4 is the one that is included with all the distros I know.

Kim,

I've heard suse, mandrake, and redhat are good for newbies, and debian, slackware, and gentoo are better for more experienced linux users. As I haven't actually used the latter 3 I cannot confirm this from personal experience, but if you find debian's getting confusing, you should give suse a shot.

-Venkman

 

[KimLeece]

Venkman -
Well I tried the Suse try-out iso today - but it crashed! I actually think now from all the experiences that I have had that it's probably a kernel problem. My machine doesn't like the 2.4 kernel - Debian uses the 2.2 kernel - or at least the version that they say is stable does - they have later Debian versions - possibly with the 2.4 - but they do not say that they are stable yet. I release that linux has a learning curve, and would have probably preferred to use Mandrake - but it doesn't matter - I have been learning new OS's since DOS 3.1 and even have a little UNIX from a long time ago - so I think I will manage OK - there are a lot of manuals/tutorials/howto's on the Debian site so here goes - at least I have this forum to turn to if I really get stuck!

Again thanks for all the suggestions and help -

Kim.

 

[Norwich]

For info, the Debian stable distro is aimed at the server market where reliable, stable platforms are necesary. debian also provide unstable and testing distros which are more up to date but liable to keel over if you are unlucky.

I've been running testing for a while and it's fine ("testing" is the least stable of all - "unstable" is between the two).

The only issue is that you will want to regularly upgrade to fix anf problems and to keep up to date (the reason you would run testing or unstable anyway) so you will need a broadband connection of some sort to downlaod new versions of packages using the tools provided.

 

[pconrad]

It looks like the only thing you have not changed is the hardware. Try a new box, and RedHat should work fine.

 

[wlwoman]

FYI:

AMD K-6 and Redhat don't go all that well together during the installation process. The trick is to start with a lower version like 6.0, then upgrade to 7.0, then to the version you want. I'm running 7.3 successfully on my backup server after following this process.

Even the newer boxes sometimes have a problem with the AMD-Redhat install, but I've found that a text installation always runs to completion.

Good luck!