cannot mount cd - on new install

[shlomibt]

Hi,
I just finished building my new machine and tried to install suse 10.2.
put the cd into place and reboot...
menu started where i choose installation, choose a language and then
i got the error message cannot mound cd.

Can anyone help me with that?
Thanks
shlomi.

[dijetlo]

What exactly does the error message say?

[D-cat]

I've seen this happen before, usually with older computers and oddball BIOS.

I solved it by creating a separate 5GB partition and copying the entire DVD to it. When the install CD or DVD then boots, I choose hard drive install and point the installer to that hard drive partition.

For whatever reason, not only does this work fine, but once installed and booted, the CD mounting works fine too. It appears to be an installer issue. As a bonus though, it's nice to have your HDD as the base install source (kind of like \Windows\Options\Cabs in MS), makes installing new software faster and easier.
(mounted to /mnt/install/suse102 on my laptop)

[shlomibt]

hi,
thaks D-cat, but how do i create this partition on the disk, this is a blank disk with no os on the system, fresh new computer

[D-cat]

The easy way:
Download and burn the gParted Live CD (or gPartedMagic, more or less the same thing) and boot with that. You'll be able to create and manipulate whatever partitions you want.

Harder way:
Boot your current CD in recovery mode. You get a root text prompt. Type fdisk -l to get your list of storage devices. I'm going to assume you're hard drive is /dev/hda . Type fdisk /dev/hda (or whatever your HDD device name is). Manipulate through the text menu and make your block calculations to partition your hard drive the way you want it. Once you exit after writing the partition table, format the partitions. mkfs.ext3 /dev/hda1 (and any other partitions defined Linux) to format storage areas. mkswap [swap partition] to format swap space.

Creating your partitions first is also good if you're trying to install to a low RAM system, since you can define the swap area beforehand, the installer can make use of it if necessary.

Now comes the decision time for what you want for partitions. You have four possible primary partition types. If you want more than that, you'll need to define an extended partition. I personally prefer to keep within the world of primary partitions when possible. Having experience as a current SuSE 10.2 user, I'm starting to wish I defined a larger root partition (currently at 10G)... It's working fine, I just feel a little limited when I get the desire to install large games. Maybe it's a good thing.

My suggestion:

1 (/dev/hda1): 15G ext3 to mount as / (aka root)
2 (/dev/hda2): All remaining ext3 to mount as /home
3 (/dev/hda3): 5G ext3 to mount as /mnt/install (this is the one you'd copy your install DVD to)
4 (/dev/hda4): 512M for swap (this is flexible depending on your intended usage and how much RAM you have)

---

Copying may pose another issue, since you need to be able to mount the install disc before you can copy it in file mode. For this, you need a small live distro that can be loaded entirely in your RAM (assuming you have enough RAM) so you can take the boot disc out, or alternatively have another DVD-ROM (maybe external) you can use as the source copy. gPartEd Live CD can actually do this (boot into RAM), but if I remember, it didn't have a really useful file manager, you'd have to manually mount the hard drive and the disc and make the copy all in text mode. Some other distros can also perform this operation maybe easier, like DSL and Puppy, but both will require some sizable RAM to load itself entirely inside.

---

I'm an idiot. I forgot to ask if this computer was on a network. I performed a SuSE install on another laptop before via FTP pretty painlessly (it only had a CD-ROM, no DVD, and was really unreliable). You might be able to do this without having to worry about pre-partitioning and copying.

[shlomibt]

Thanks again!

your last comment sounds excellent - if the machine is connected to the network,
where can i found these instalation cd's on ftp site or you ment that i'll have to set up some ftp place ....?

[D-cat]

It goes much faster if you set up your own FTP server. As far as I know all the official 10.2 mirrors have been taken down, but the 10.3 ones were still up, if you really needed to do it over the Internet.