[Leaplist] Re: boxen won't install OS

[Bruce Metcalf]

Richard F. Ostrow Jr. wrote:

> What, specifically, fails?

That's a most excellent question. Let me attempt a comprehensive reply:

There are three boxen, named Jupiter, Juno, and Janus. I want the first
two to run Kubuntu Breezy, Janus I want to run IPCOP.

Jupiter is an Athlon 700 w/512M RAM. It won't recognize that the CDROM 
contains a bootable CD. It will boot DOS from a floppy. Used that to 
flash the BIOS in case that was the cause. It wasn't.

Juno is an HP Vectra with a Pentium II 400 w/256M RAM. It just makes 
funny noises and doesn't do a thing. This piece of hardware came from a 
fellow LEAPer who claimed it worked, but I haven't
witnessed that. It's also an HP Vectra, which may be part of the problem.

Janus is a Pentium MMX 133 w/48M RAM. It does recognize the CD and 
starts loading, but freezes part way thru (before I get a choice to let 
it verify the CD). IIRC it's the "Checking battery status" step, which 
doesn't make much sense as it's a desktop.

I have tried swapping both CDROM drives and hard drives among the three 
to no avail. The failure modes remain consistent, suggesting these 
aren't the cause. In all three, I'm running the HD and CDROM drives as 
Master on separate IDE cables.


> Windows installs may not give you much of a clue of what's going on.

I agree, but mention that to point out that it's not OS related, but a 
hardware issue. A machine that *did* boot an OS should boot it again, right?


> Try a linux install of some sort.... While it's installing, see if it
> has a console that shows a bunch of debug messages (this at least 
> used to be popular among linux distros).

Be glad to look for this. How does one find such a console in Kubuntu or 
IPCOP?


> Otherwise, try running through the steps to install either gentoo or lfs,
> where you do everything manually and can pin-point exactly what stage of
> the install fails.

Now there's a new idea, thanks! I'm about to leave town for a few days, 
but will give this a try on my return.

Bruce Metcalf