Any linux geeks out here?

[FuzzyBear]

AMD XP 2500+ and a gig of ram.

K7N2 Delta L motherboard

I'm getting an unspecified error during the SuSe 9.2 install, no matter which way I configure it. (doing a manual takes longer to generate the error, but after a few dozen tries, the error is still occurring no matter which options I specify, including a safe install)
I'm contemplating trying another kernel, just to be sure, but I can't find a debian install for AMD.
Slackware is a little over my head at this point.

I heart the ctrl-alt-f4 for error information, but an "error -3 while decompressing" with an end_request I/O error dev fd0 sector 0 doesn't help me much when I don't know what's wrong with my hardware
(f8862c0b(2687)->ff9e5000(4096) for reference)


I disabled external cacheing in the bios. (internal wasn't an option) I turned pnp os to no, there's no overclocking, the agp aperture is set to 128, same as teh card (tried 64 and 32 as well, same problem) temperature is 100 F for the case and 113 for the processor, so well within spec, reverting to bios defaults (even the conservative ones) generates the same error.

I can't find a way to turn off power management in the bios, but it's set to user config and i manually configged each setting to 'off'

I can';t find any other error documentation, yet..
anyone?

[DocBobo]

Well, I'm not much of a linux geek, but dev fd0 is your floppy drive. Do you have one connected to your motherboard?

[Faladarea]

Are you installing from the DVD ISO or CD ISO?

And yes, /dev/fd0 is the floppy drive :)

[FuzzyBear]

CD ISO, and yes, I have a floppy drive connected to the motherboard.
The drive is currently empty

[ravaa]

First, I'd suggest a distro wit hbetter package management than the horrid rpm format suse, mandrake, fedora, etc. use. For a complete newby with no wishes to get very deep into their distro other than usage I suggest Ubuntu. apt > rpm :) .

Now as for the error:

Wierd, don't see why its giving an error involving the floppy drive (fd0), maybe the install uses a virtual drive to mimic having the disk. It's having a problem decompressing the data from the cd. Try reburning it.

[FuzzyBear]

Didn't burn it, bought it. the first ISO timed out after 48 hours, it was just worth the money.

I'm not fond of rpm packaging either, which is why i was thinking debian for the apt get, but I'd like to find a way to make this work, just because Suse has more packages available.

I'll wager it does use a virtual drive. any ideas on how to circumvent the floppy drive error?

[Faladarea]

SuSe is like the Macintosh of Linux Distros...

You select the regular install it does not even let you pick what items to install...

BAD BAD IMHO :)

[ravaa]

Again, take a look at Ubuntu. Think debian, but more inlined for new users and with more up to date packages. Either that or Gentoo, since it seems you have at least a little experience with *nix.

No idea. The hold your hand installation that Suse uses doesn't leave much for geting your hands dirty type of trouble shooting.

[Mutton]

I myself currently like Gentoo (http://www.gentoo.org). I've heard good things about Debian and am tempted to try it. BTW, here's the Debian Torrents (http://cdimage.debian.org/debian-cd/torrents/current/i386/) for all i386 arch (yes that includes AMD Athlon XP). Or you can browse down their file tree to an i386 build from this page (http://www.debian.org/distrib/cd) if the other link is dead.

First thing I'd start with in troubleshooting is disconnecting your floppy drive and attempting an install. Next, I'd get out my trusty Knoppix disk (http://www.knoppix.net/) and run memtest86 (http://www.memtest86.com/). If that passes, I'd boot into Knoppix, pull up a terminal and run lspci (http://www.die.net/doc/linux/man/man8/lspci.8.html) and dmesg (http://www.die.net/doc/linux/man/man8/dmesg.8.html) and see if I can find anything strange.

Just remember Google (http://www.google.com/) is your friend. And if you browse any Forums (http://www.linuxforum.com/) it is common Etiquette to use the search feature before starting a new thread.

[ravaa]

Gentoo is a pretty solid distro that I favored until I stopped using linux and went to FreeBSD . Only thing is, if the computer you are installing is an older box, I wouldn't suggest it. Gentoo is a source based distro, means you compile everything (and if you go from stage 1 install..I mean EVERYTHING) from source. In and of itself not a big deal and there are some performance benefits (don't let the rice boys fool you, its not that big of a difference), but the wait for big packages is just numbing.

[FuzzyBear]

I'll give the other ones a look. my main problem is that, due to power concerns I can't leave a machine on while I'm away at work and most of the open source ftp's and torrents seem exceedingly slow. (1.5mpbs connection here so that's not the bottleneck)

memtest86 passed the basic tests, i have that on a bootable floppy. I'll yoink a copy of knoppix, I think we have a few sitting around unopened at work and I *had* heard that it was often used for troubleshooting.

Thanks for all your help folks

[Zutan]

what type of harddrives are you useing ?

IDE or SATA ? (i know its not FD0 but you know worth a check) some older versions of the kernel dont like SATA (which is why i dont have mandrake on this. it does NOT like SATA hard drives (atleast 10.0 doesent).

[FuzzyBear]

IDE across the board.

I'm not a huge fan of SATA in general yet.
We've got a few comps with SATA drives at work, but they're not noticeably faster for anything other than large data copy jobs, and they're impractical for my home use, since it would preclude slaving up old drives from any of the other boxes in the house.

[FuzzyBear]

I tried my trusty Knoppix Live CD.

I can get to memtest and it doesn't return any errors.
I tried about a half-dozen other boot options including 'knoppix failsafe'.
It generates an error -3 while decompressing every time except for a boot to user mode 2.

From there I was able to run an lspci -v but I can't exactly cut and paste.

If I output it to a file, how do I get that file to you folks?
Can I just mount the floppy drive from the knoppix root prompt and output the file there?

On top of that, can I output dmesg to a file the same way?

[Mutton]

I'm not familiar with user2 mode. What options did you pass to the kernel to boot it?

Also what Powersupply and video card are you using?

[Faladarea]

Another distro to check out is:

http://www.watsky.net/