Too Fast (and other problems)

Here are my system specs...

Dual PIII 1Ghz processors
Asus CUV4X-D motherboard
256MB ram
20GB HD
nVidia GFX5200

When trying to install Mandrake Linux 10.1 the install freezes up part way through disc 2. If I choose to only install using disc 1 then I get different errors completeing the install. Sometimes something about an RPM. Other times it's something about a missing HDLIST. If I ignore these messages I can continue and finish the install. The problem is that when I reboot and startup I will get the boot screen and the progress bar at the boot screen almost reaches the end but always stops short and nothing happens... Except for constant HD activity.

Now the weird thing... I don't know if it's related to any of the above. When I am performing the install all of the little information windows (the little messages and screens that are supposed to keep you entertained during the installation) all cycle VERY quickly. They stay on the screen for about 3 seconds and then the next one appears. I obviously don't have time to read any of them. I didn't think it was a big deal so I ignored it. Now I notice that when I start up the computer and it freezes during the boot up I can hit ESC to enter verbose mode (whatever that is). I end up somewhere that looks like a prompt/terminal (?) that asks for my login ID. All of the text disappears after about 5 seconds. It reappears when I press a key. After I type my login ID it requests my password however VERY quickly (all in under a second) some text appears saying something along the lines of "Timeout from inactivity for 60 seconds" and then it goes back to asking me for my login ID.

Anwyays, sorry for the long description. I was hoping somebody could give me some suggestions as to what I should do. I would really like to get away from Windows and Linux seems like a good way to do that. Unfortunately it hasn't been very friendly so far. Should I give up and just try a different distribution?

Did you overclock your computer to a massive amout? Maybe somehow time goes faster to you computer than to you?

No it's not overclocked at all. I have the clock speed in the BIOS set to 1000Mhz which is what it's supposed to be. There's nothing wrong with the hardware. It works fine when I put WinXP on it so it should all be working.

Disc and RPM errors? Sounds like cuprupted medium to me. Did you check your md5's when you burned the discs? Either way, try to re-burn them.

Jeremy

Hmm... Ok I will give that a try. I have the DVD iso on my other WinXP computer but I don't have a DVD burner yet. I will try to using the DVD version as soon as I get a chance. Unless there is some way to mount the iso and install it on the other computer through the network?

Also... A bad copy of the CD's doesn't exactly explain the whole light speed situation although I guess it could be possible that it IS the CD's that is causing this.

I was also consistently getting a particular hdlist error before during the formatting stage of installation. Something along the lines of "Error : hdlist not found". I did a search on these forums and somebody said they fixed the problem by using a 40x CD-ROM drive instead of their 32x. So I switched from using my CD-ROM to using my DVD-ROM drive instead and the error didn't occur. Except now I'm getting these different errors at the end of the install.

The speed issue *might* be related to your dual processor. I don't have dual processors, so I'm not 100% sure.

Anyone with dual CPU's know if there's anything special you have to do during installation?

jeremy

Quote:

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Originally Posted by jeremy1701

The speed issue *might* be related to your dual processor. I don't have dual processors, so I'm not 100% sure.

Anyone with dual CPU's know if there's anything special you have to do during installation?

jeremy

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I thought it might be that as well but then I found this as one of the features on the Mandrake website...

"Enterprise Linux kernel 2.4.22 provides native support for Hi-Memory (up to 4GB) and SMP (Symmetric Multi Processing)."

Mandrake Linux DOES recognize that it is a dual processor system. At the terminal/prompt (what is that called?) where it asks for my login ID and password it says that it is running on a dual processor system. x86 i686 or something like that. I can't remember and I can't check at the moment since I put XP back on it to test the hardware and make sure I wasn't having problems with it.

Well, Enterprise Linux and 10.1 Official download are two different things. ;) 10.1 Official download runs the 2.6 kernel.

Jeremy

"Linux works on SMP (Symmetric Multi-Processors) machines. SMP support was introduced with kernel version 2.0, and has improved steadily ever since."

From...
http://www.linuxvoodoo.com/resources...P-HOWTO-2.html

I think tomorrow night I'll try putting ML back onto the computer and copy down exactly what the errors say. I'll also try taking out one of the processors and see how/if that affects things. Thanks for the help and suggestions :)

Actually the next page on that website has some helpful tips. Although I don't really understand a lot of it... Such as what's a kernel and how do I make one? I guess I have a lot of googling to do tomorrow night :roll: