Error on Mandrake 10 installation: "keymap ioctl failed

[Fish]

Hello,
I'm completely new to Linux, and i picked up my distro (Mandrake 10.0 Community) from a newsagent with a little book explaining Linux to the new user. The installation instructions are a little breif in the guide and assume that you are using the graphical interface and that you are having no problems with the install.

However, once the installer asks your language, it gives the error message: "Error. An error has occured. Keymap ioctl failed (0 128 512): Invalid argument." The installer then dumps you back to the licence agreement, which takes you to the language selection, which displays the error message once a choice has been made, which dumps you back to the licence agreement... ad infinitum.

My system is an aged but otherwise healthy Toshiba Satellite 220 CDS with 32 MB RAM (enough to run the text-based Mandrake installer), a 133 MHz Pentium processor and an approx. 1.5 GB HDD. These system requirements fall within the minium specified for the use of Mandrake 10, and I see no reason it should not install. I am using this system to try Linux mainly because Windows is fairly useless on it.

I am booting from a floppy disk (written by the image writing application on the Mandrake CD) and I have tried each of the three images that include CD-ROM drivers (which I need, as I am preforming te install from a set of CDs.)

Please advise, I am fed up with Windows and I would like to try Mandrake as an alternative.

[drakebasher]

In my experience, Mandrake has some issues with configuration, never mind whether the system is modest or grand....


For any system for which Mandrake fails to install appropriately, I would suggest the following:
Use the text mode.
Partition beforehand, if possible.
Once "text mode" is working, run XF86 to configure the GUI, but count on it to fail.
Reboot, and edit XF86Config as required.

To do this, be warned, you should know how to work at the command line and you should (or will soon) understand both XF86 and fdisk. But that's part of the fun of Mandrake: you learn a lot of the nuts and bolts, whether you planned to or not.

The installation instructions are a little breif in the guide and assume that you are using the graphical interface and that you are having no problems with the install.

In retrospect, the "Starter Guide" is really a cute little joke. It just takes a while to appreciate it.... I still need some time.