Linux Help - PLEASE

So I installed SuSE 9.1 Professional on one of my computers. First I tried to install it in a separate partition, could not get it to work, so I said forget it, just going to see if I can get it to work alone.

So I installed it on the 250 GB HD, and it still won't run. It doesn't boot right, have to boot via the CD Installation menu, but at least it comes up. Everything looks good, but randomly the screen just freezes ... totally. I can't do anything, mouse won't move, keyboard is dead, sound is gone ... dead dead dead. Just like it was when I had it on a smaller partition.

Tried to repair the installation. Everything checks out. I do an repair on the file system, and it tells me that the RiserFS is corrupted and needs to be repaired. Ihad the same problem on the smaller partition as well, and there also it detected an error at 86%. When I try to repair it it does something, but it does not really repair it, when I check it again the FS is still corrupted. So I check the boot loader, and I have a problem there also. When I try to save the new boot loader configuration it give me an error message "Error occurred while installing GRUB" "GNU GRUB version 0.94 (640K lower/3072 upper memory). It did that in the installation, and I can't fix it either.

Anybody have any experience with this OS? I really want to move to Linux with many of our machines, but I need to be able to figure out what is going on here.

Oh, I have 250 GB HD, 1 GB RAM, nVidia 4400. Could it be the HD size? But then I should not have had the same problems when I tried to partition.

Marianne

 

Most of my experience is with Fedora Core and Red Hat but without more information it would be hard to say. The first half of your post I was thinking something wrong with your X enviroment. I don't know if SuSE 9.1 is on XFree86 or using X.org. But then reading onto the second half makes me thing bad drive?

Have you tried another file system? ext3? Not that there is anything wrong with riserfs. In fact I use it on most of my machines. Can you get into single user mode or is GRUB not able to load? Or do you only get a rescue install?

Also, what kind of machine is this? What video card? Have you tried another flavor of Linux?

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Some software money can't buy. For everything else there's Micros~1

 

Brandnew drive, was tested last week.

I have not tried another file system, can try to do ext3. This is an HP Pavillon motherboard, but many of the innards have been replaced over the course of the years, such as the memory, the video card (nVidia 4400).

Marianne

 

maybe try to only partition like 80gig of the drive and see how that goes... you can always add more or expand later. FS type shouldn't matter.

I have a copy of Suse 9.1 that I've been meaning to install on a spare machine -- I'll give it a try today or tomorrow and report back.

 

I believe I found the problem.

My HD broke beginning of this month on my quite old HP 7955. I took it in, told them it needed a new HD. They told me that the symptoms didn't sound like the HD, so they needed to do a diagnosis, 99 bucks. Well I said yes, silly me. They called a couple of days later to tell me HD was broken and they could put a new one in for either 140 for 150 gig or 190 for 250 gig. I said sure, put the 250 gig one in.

Ten days later I got a disk read error, took it back, they said HD was fine, was an OS problem, they reinstalled it.

This last weeked I had my linux adventure, it would not work, then when I tried to at least salvage my XP installation I got the disk read error again.

So now I did some research and find out that a 7955 has an ATA-100/66-33 card, while my new HD needs an ATA-133. In addition there might be BIOS issues with a HD that size on an older machine. I believe that this is what has been causing all my problems.

Now it is time to go to Comp USA and fight with them over the HD issue. If I pay 99 dollars for a "professional" to fix a problem, I can expect them to be aware of such conflicts. They get paid for their expertise, not for them to be there and have me wait at the counter for 30 minutes at each visit.

Marianne

 

And ATA-133 drive should work in an ATA-100/66 card. The BIOS thing is another issue.

__________________________________________________________
Some software money can't buy. For everything else there's Micros~1

 

From the HD User Guide:

"Note that ATA/100, 66, and 33 PCI cards do not support drives larger than 137 GB unless specifically noted by the manufacturer."

There is an adapter card for it which I can get however. But that's something Comp USA should have known IMO.

Marianne

 

Sorry, I should have been more clear. ATA-133 is independant of drive size. Drive size is more of an issue of the BIOS. So as long as the BIOS knows how to address this drive, Linux (kernel 2.4 and over) shouldn't have an issue with the drive. I have run 160GB drives on MB's that only support ATA-66.

__________________________________________________________
Some software money can't buy. For everything else there's Micros~1