My system : Duel P4 2.4 ghz Xeon on a SuperMicro P4DC6+ mainboard with onboard Adaptec AIC-7899W dual channel Ultra160 (320) SCSI controller. Suse 8.0 pro (7 cd version) boot off of cd 1 in my scsi dvd drive and although I had to use the text installer (I guess Yast2 doesn't like my Geforce 4) I got the basics up and running. Installed part of 8.0 pro to an extra 20 gig EIDE Maxtor drive. I asked it to install the base stuff, KDE 3.0, gnome, a few games. Got to the point where I had to remove my installation media and reboot. Joy - LILO comes up, Linux boots, Yast comes back up but I get Error while initialize package descriptions. Check the log file /var/log/y2log. Hmmm. Ok. I get the error twice, no more packages are installed but it asks me for a root id, password, sets up my basic hardware (ethernet, printer, monitor and graphics card), etc and boots into KDE 3.0. Joy. Things are working, I'm making some progress. I get a basic KDE 3.0 system, SMP kernel has been installed and it recognized my onboard ethernet properly. Let's goto YOU to get the latest updates (from ftp.suse.com). Path /pub/suse/i386/updates//patches not found (Yes, I see the two //). Hmm, let's put that aside for a minute and try to use Yast to install packages from cd manually. Could not mount device /dev/dvd input/output error. Mount: I could not determine the file system type and none was specified. In the xconsole I get this error : linux kernel: I/O Error: dev 0b:00, sector 0 linux kernel: I/O Error: dev 0b:00, sector 0 linux kernel: FAT: unable to read boot sector Ok, I managed to get a basic system installed but obviously something is seriously wrong. I have a feeling after my initial install and reboot Yast failed because of something to do with the smp kernel it chose for me. I can mount and see ntfs drives (both scsi and eide) from my windows partitions. It seems as though I can't mount any fat device (the Suse 8.0 cd 1 rom in the dvd drive ) ... # mount /dev/dvd /dev/dvd: Input/output error mount: you must specify the filesystem type Here is my etc/fstab ... /dev/hdd2 / reiserfs defaults 1 2 /dev/cdrecorder /media/cdrecorder auto ro,noauto,user,exec 0 0 /dev/cdrom /media/cdrom auto ro,noauto,user,exec 0 0 devpts /dev/pts devpts defaults 0 0 /dev/dvd /media/dvd auto ro,noauto,user,exec 0 0 /dev/fd0 /media/floppy auto noauto,user,sync 0 0 proc /proc proc defaults 0 0 usbdevfs /proc/bus/usb usbdevfs noauto 0 0 /dev/hda1 /windows/C ntfs ro,noauto,user,umask=022 0 0 /dev/hdc1 /windows/D ntfs ro,noauto,user,umask=022 0 0 /dev/sda1 /windows/E ntfs ro,noauto,user,umask=022 0 0 /dev/sdb4 /media/zip auto noauto,user 0 0 /dev/hdd1 swap swap pri=42 0 0 Ergh. I'd be forever grateful for a bit of advice on where to go from here. Start over from scratch and do a Safe Mode Install and worry about SMP later? Thanks in advance, Sean McGrath