Re: Failure trying to install Sarge and Ubuntu on a new Compaq Presario
On Mon, Jun 20, 2005 at 12:08:47AM -0700, Xeno Campanoli wrote:
> My problem seems to all be focused around failure of the CD/DVD RW
> drive. This drive failed intermittently in three different places in
> the Ubuntu install, for instance. I'm presently installing (shudder)
> Red Hat, and that is going well.
That's weird, because the CD driver is entirely within the kernel.
You could try to use Debian with the radhat kernel (by passing
something like "init=/dev/hda1" on the kernel "command line"), or
discover which radhat kernel (with uname -a) is used, and use the
most-similar possible kernel with Debian. Though, this should surely
not matter for a simple CD drive.
What kind of intermittent problem are you seeing? Are you sure the CD
itself is good, and written correctly? Does the kernel (on
debian/ubuntu) see the drive? During bootup (or in the output of
/bin/dmesg), you should see something like:
Probing IDE interface ide0...
hda: Maxtor 6E040L0, ATA DISK drive
ide0 at 0x1f0-0x1f7,0x3f6 on irq 14
* Probing IDE interface ide1...
* hdc: HL-DT-ST GCE-8481B, ATAPI CD/DVD-ROM drive
ide1 at 0x170-0x177,0x376 on irq 15
Probing IDE interface ide2...
ide2: Wait for ready failed before probe !
Probing IDE interface ide3...
ide3: Wait for ready failed before probe !
Probing IDE interface ide4...
ide4: Wait for ready failed before probe !
Probing IDE interface ide5...
ide5: Wait for ready failed before probe !
hda: max request size: 128KiB
hda: 80293248 sectors (41110 MB) w/2048KiB Cache, CHS=65535/16/63, UDMA(100)
hda: cache flushes supported
hda: hda1 hda2 hda3
* hdc: ATAPI 40X CD-ROM CD-R/RW drive, 2048kB Cache, UDMA(33)
* Uniform CD-ROM driver Revision: 3.20
> My other workstation has SuSE 9.2, which has given me enough troubles to
> make me want to look elsewhere, and besides I like Debian. If anyone
> can make some suggestions as to how I could install Ubuntu or Sarge,
> please let me know.
You might try booting Debian (and maybe Unbuntu as well; I don't know)
with the kernel cmd line "bf26" to use the 2.6 series kernel. If your
problem lies solely in installation, then this may work around it.
(Of course, you'll also need to use 2.6 afterwards).
> It sounds like Ubuntu is the better answer for a workstation, but
> I'm open to any well intentioned suggestions.
Many of us like Debian testing on a workstation. In combination with
apt-pinning, especially, which allows Do-What-I-Want installation of
packages from any of Debian's "distributions" (where distribution is
one of sid, testing, or stable).
FYI your message is best directed at another list; probably
debian-user, possibly debian-boot.
Justin
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