Mailinglist Archive: opensuse (1587 mails)

[jimo@xxxxxxxxxx (Jim Osborn)]

I'm in the process of trying to install 5.3 on a machine that has
been happily running an old Slackware kernel 1.1.59 system.  However,
I get the red screen of death, with no option but to reboot, and no
information except "An error occurred during installation!" 

FWIW, it's a 486-66 EISA/VESA motherboard system, 32M RAM, BusLogic
BT-747S SCSI (HD, tape, CD) bios v4.5, 1992.

On the supplied boot disc, linuxrc seems to load the scsi module ok
if I let it choose its own parameters, but not if I try to give it an
address (0x330, from the old boot messages) per the manual, page 101
under BusLogic parameters. (I really don't see anything useful
looking at BusLogic.c as pg 101 suggests.)  Using this boot disc,
the process seems to degrade randomly, failing at different, earlier
points each time I reboot the system, as though it's somehow remembering
things across pressings of the reset button.  Sometimes the ramdisc
load hangs, sometimes I get all the way to YaST.

When I use the scsi02 disc from CD1, which is supposed to be BusLogic,
I usually get to YaST, but still fail with the red screen.

Here's a play-by-play:

linuxrc: >>> v0.75 (Kernel 2.0.35) ...<<<
choose language: English
display: color
keyboard: American

System info:
  Kernel msgs: memory sized by init13 088h
               pci_init: no bios32 detected
               memory: 30476k/32768k avail
                      (836k kernel code, 384k reserved, 872 <cut off here>
  Harddisks/cdroms: ******** scsi: ************
     harddisk: toshiba mk538fb  rev: 6061
               host: scsi0 channel: 00  Id: 00 Lun: 00
     CD-ROM:   teac  cd-rom cd-50  rev: 1.06
               host: scsi0 Channel: 00 Id: 02 Lun: 00

  Modules: No information available
  PCI:     PCI devices found: <nothing>
  Processor: processor 0, cpu 486, unknown/no except fpu, fpu_exception
  Memory: 31412224 total, 1548288 used, 29863936 free, 212992 shared
          724992 buffers, 188416 cached
  I/O Ports: ... 0330-0333: BusLogic BT-747S
  Interrupts: 0: 86905   timer
              1:    75   keyboard
              2:     0   cascade
              8:     0 + rtc
             11:    29 + BusLogic BT-747S
             13:     1   math error

Kernel modules (hardware drivers): <skip this for scsi02 disc>

Start installation / system:
  Start installation:
    Choose source media: CD-ROM
      "Trying to mount the CD-ROM..."  <flash something too fast to see>
      ...wait fifteen seconds or so....
      "Loading data into ramdisk (7860 kB)...
      "Starting YaST"...
   <red screen> "An error occurred during installation!"
   Usually the system is totally unresponsive, must hit <reset>
   Sometimes pressing <return> clears red screen, back to Start Installation
    
Sometimes, YaST gets as far as offering install-from-scratch/update/expert
etc., but fails when asked to actually install something.

Sometimes linuxrc says it's loading something into a ramdisk (800 kB or so),
earlier in the process, sometimes it loads a ramdisk (0 kB) and hangs.

At least, after rebooting with my old boot disk, the system seems to
be intact, so I guess nothing actually got "installed,"  but I see
a lot of directories under / with today's date on them, and a YaST.tdir
in /tmp.

This is very humbling. :(

Any ideas?

jimo@xxxxxxxxxx
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