Failed to locate CD-ROM device; boot failed

[TerranFury]

I'm new to Linux; please excuse me if this is a very stupid question.

I got a set of (2) RedHat 8 CDs in the back of a "Dummies" book; I'm trying to use them to install Linux on an older computer (P166).

Trying to boot from CD1, I get the following error:

ISOLINUX 1.75 2002-06-14 isolinux: Loading spec packet failed, trying to wing it
...
isolinux: Failed to locate CD-ROM device; boot failed.

I tried flashing the BIOS with a newer version; still no go.

I also tried setting PnP in the BIOS to "other" or "none" instead of "Windows 98;" I get the same results with all settings.

My next thought was to boot from a floppy. Strangely, CD1 contains neither the dosutils directory nor the images directory; neither does CD2. Only two *.img files exist on CD1:

/RedHat/base/stage2.img
/isolinux/initrd.img

I tried downloading boot.img from the RedHat 8.0 FTP. Lacking rawrite, I used tomsrtbt (a 1-floppy distro) and dd to make the disk. It boots, but I get an error towards the beginning of the installer saying the version I booted from doesn't match what's on the CD.

Both tomsrtbt and Win98FE can mount the drive and read without problems.

I'm using an ATAPI TORiSAN CD-ROM CDR_S18. Windows tells me it's on the Secondary IDE controller of an Intel 82371SB PCI Bus Master IDE Controller.

I would greatly appreciate any help!

[TerranFury]

In my first post, I said "I get an error towards the beginning of the installer saying the version I booted from doesn't match what's on the CD." Here's the actual text of that message:

The second stage of the install which you have selected does not match the boot disk which you are using.  This shouldn't happen, and I'm rebooting your system now.

[Dolda2000]

I'd say those two CDs are some strange compilation that the guys at Dummies have made, seeing that it lacks "images" and "dosutils". Thus I'm not sure that it's possible to fix.
Could it be that the CDs are damaged? In that case, you should be able to get new ones from the place where you bought the book.

[TerranFury]

Thanks Dolda2000.

The book was RedHat Linux 8 for Dummies. I went back to Barnes and Noble and found a similar but different book, Linux for Dummies, which had a directory tree printed at the back, complete with "dosutils" and "images!" Plus, the CDs were labeled differently. Problem solved, right? Nope; they turn out to be the exact same thing.

So, now that I'm back at square 1, any thoughts? I tried modifying the boot disk I downloaded by substituting corresponding files from the "isolinux" directory of the CD in a desperate but failed attempt to get it working.

Is there any way to solve this?

[Dolda2000]

I don't really know. I haven't ever even experienced anything like this before. Try this: I've put rawrite.exe and the official boot.img (maybe the one you got was strange in some way...) on my server. Download boot.img and rawrite.exe from me and see if it would somehow work better.

[wassy121]

they are right when they say that the version you booted is different than the version on the CD. I don't know what you can do about that, besides possibly get the image that Dolda has, and see if that works. I wonder if those cds contain an image (not toms) that will give it a kickstart from floppy since your CDrom is probably not autodetected at boot time. Don't worry about that last fact, as linux will set it up correctly, just not until you boot up.

[TerranFury]

Thanks again, Dolda and wassy.

wassy: I used a file comparison utility to check your boot.img against the the boot.img that I first downloaded; they are byte-for-byte identical.

Since my last post I installed RedHat 8 from the CDs to another newer computer without any problems. Now that I have a working installation from that CD, is there any way that I can use it to make an installation boot disk?

[Dolda2000]

There is, but it would be the same as the one you already have; just dd /images/boot.img on the CD to a floppy.
However, try connecting the two computers with an ethernet network, make the CD available through FTP on the new computer, boot the older computer with just the floppy; no CD, and do an installation over FTP.

[TerranFury]

How would using FTP rather than the CD fix the problem of the boot disk not matching the rest of the install? Or could I boot from the network itself? (The BIOS does have an option for that). Unfortunately, I have no NIC in that PC and no spare ones lying about, which seems to eliminate that option, but I'm curious.

[Dolda2000]

Well, I was thinking that there was some strange kind of read error or the like, especially since the dosutils and images directories didn't show up and ISOLINUX couldn't read its spec file. It seems more than strange, but I really have no better clue at the moment.
The boot over the LAN, btw., you'll need to flash a *PROM for you NIC, so I think that option would be eliminated as well.
You could run a hard disk installation as well. If you have a spare hard drive lying around, copy the CDs contents to it (so that it matches the contents of the "os" (as opposed to "iso") directory on redhat FTP servers and mirrors), boot from the boot disk and specify the hard drive as the installation source. You could also do that within a subdir on the hard drive on your newer computer, put that HD in the older one and specify that subdir as the installation source.