Installing ubuntu 9.10 -- some problems

[Tyler Aviss]

On Mon, Jan 4, 2010 at 1:25 PM, Rajinder Yadav <devguy.ca-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w at public.gmane.org> wrote:
> On Mon, Jan 4, 2010 at 6:50 AM, Paul King <sciguy-Ja3L+HSX0kI at public.gmane.org> wrote:
>> The download of the ISO went OK, the binary was burned to DVD, and it checked
>> out. I booted into it and noticed:
>>
>> 1. graphical interface doesn't work (kernel panics and it can't find my main
>> hard drive)
>
> I am seeing similar problems with the LiveCD, on my box, however I am
> able to bootup and make it to the 1st screen that asks to select a
> language. After this point my screen gets really messed up and I see
> vertical green bars. I also was getting a lot of SR0 errors not sure
> why?
>
> I was able to use the same CD to install on my laptop, which is an
> older pc and its now running 9.10 without and issues.
>
> Some improvement were made with the install cd, because when it first
> came, i could not even install 9.10 on my laptop. I did another
> download and burned a 2nd cd, will trying to reinstall on my box
> tonight.
>
> I don't think the install CD is up to par and I would report any
> issues. I posted comment about my problem on the forum but I think I
> will need to log a bug tonight after another go at it with the new CD.
>
>> 2. text mode works well, except for when the time comes to select my packages.
>> it seems to dump core (gives a symbolic stack dump on screen for a split
>> second), then put me into a screen where it says that the "selecting packages"
>> step failed. A look at the console (tty4) says that "pkgsel failed (code 127)".
>> After this, I checked the DVD, no problems.
>>
>> Another bit of strangeness is that in text mode, the system was going to
>> install to my USB/Firewire drive by default (which is a single NTFS partition),
>> instead of the Linux partitions of my main SATA drive, inside my PC, which one
>> would think would have been the default. The firewire drive doesn't show up in
>> the BIOS, whereas the internal drive does.
>>
>> Because package selection died on me, I had to only set up the users and
>> passwords and GRUB on partitions containing only the base system (no X, nothing
>> else), so that I could at least boot into Windows to write this email.
>>
>> Anyone have any clues about this?
>>
>> Paul
>
> --
> Kind Regards,
> Rajinder Yadav
>
> http://DevMentor.org
>
> Do Good! - Share Freely, Enrich and Empower people to Transform their lives.
> --
> The Toronto Linux Users Group.      Meetings: http://gtalug.org/
> TLUG requests: Linux topics, No HTML, wrap text below 80 columns
> How to UNSUBSCRIBE: http://gtalug.org/wiki/Mailing_lists
>

sr0 would be the CD-ROM device on modern 'buntus. I'm not sure if it's
specific to SATA CD-ROM's or IDE, but I think it's both.

If you're seeing sr0 errors, perhaps it's having problems reading your
disc or has issues with your SATA bus. I know on one of my machines a
bunch of kernels were a bit "odd" with the SATA drivers and reset once
or twice before they were patched up. One in particular had the SATA
DVD-RW timeout and die constantly (but IDE worked fine, and later SATA
drives were OK too).

There's a pci=nosomething (I've forgotten what the "something" is, but
I can check when I get home) which may remedy that. I can check back
later if it's helpful to anyone.
--
The Toronto Linux Users Group.      Meetings: http://gtalug.org/
TLUG requests: Linux topics, No HTML, wrap text below 80 columns
How to UNSUBSCRIBE: http://gtalug.org/wiki/Mailing_lists