On Monday 13 October 2003 4:32 am, William Wolfe wrote:
HELP, please.
This is my first installation experience of linux, after years as a Windows + UNIX user. I am using the SuSE 8.2 Professional CD installation, having just bought it on Saturday.
I am making a commitment to move away from Windows after a year of virus scares and systems crashing frequently. It sounds like Linux has come a long way in recent years on the desktop and availablility of friendly apps. I'm really looking forward to getting it working.
So I set out on a fresh start with Linux. I started the install using a floppy bootdisk that I downloaded, with a couple of module disks until the CD takes over. (This PC won't boot from CD) Using YaST, I deleted the partitions used by Windows and manually created partitions to load SuSE. But it doesn't seem to matter if I create the partitions or take what is suggested, after formatting the partitions of the hard disk, the installation comes to a halt when YaST tries to mount the partitions. I keep getting stuck at this point :-(( and cant seem to get round it. Please help.
I get a pop up error message saying
YaST2
Could not mount partition /dev/sda4 to /mnt/.
I assume you have a SCSI based system. You don't mention anything about the hardware. It might be possible that the module needed for your system didn't get loaded or it isn't included in the initrd for booting the install kernel. More information would help.
Continue if you know what you are doing, but it would be safer to reboot and try again.
If I click continue it pops up a similar message for the next partition. If I click the other buttons it hangs.
I'm quite confused about what's going wrong. Some discussions I read suggest problems with the partitioning information. Others hint at bugs in the YaST utility.
If anyone could point me in the right direction I'd be very greatefull.
I had manually created the following partitions using the partition features for YaST
All are primary partitions.
/dev/sda1 in format EXT2 23.5Mb for /boot
/dev/sda2 in format swap 258.8Mb for swap
The rest in format reiserfs for / root, which becomes /dev/sda4
Here is some more information from other screens, and the specification of the PC is at the bottom.
I tried searching the web and the SuSE Support Database, but even after trying the following solutions I can't get round this problem.
SDB Manual Partitioning with YaST2 http://sdb.suse.de/en/sdb/html/thallma_y2_partition.html
SDB Partitioning for SuSE Linux http://sdb.suse.de/en/sdb/html/thallma_partition.html
These discussions seem to show the same symptom, but don't show a solution :-
http://lists.suse.com/archive/suse-linux-e/2002-Jul/2625.html
http://lists.suse.com/archive/suse-linux-e/2002-Jun/3234.html
Just before launching the install I swtiched the display
When I examine screen Ctrl + Alt + F2
and used a command to confirm the contents of the partition table
# fdisk -l
Disk /dev/sda: 4294 MB, 429467293 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 522 cylinders
Units = of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 1 3 24066 83 Linux
/dev/sda2 4 36 265072+ 82 Linux
/dev/sda3 37 62 208845 83 Linux
/dev/sda4 63 522 3694950 83 Linux
After seeing the error message I tried to use this screen to manually mount the partition with this command
# mount -v /dev/sda4 /
mount: you didn't specify a filesystem type for
I will try type reiserfs
(Which is fine because that is what I specified when creating the partition )
When I examine screen Ctrl + Alt + F3 I see good progress until the last few lines which are as follows...
Setting up localhost.....done
going for automatic install
mount: /var/adm/mount/boot/root: we need a loop device
mount: using /dev/loop0
rmmod usb-storage
starting /mounts/instsys/sbin/inst_setup yast
When I examine screen Ctrl + Alt + F4 I see steady progress then a full screen of data as the mounting begins.
Oct 12 17:01:05 (none) kernel: Oops: 0000 2.4.20-4GB #1 Wed Apr 16 14:50:03 UTC 2003
Oct 12 17:01:05 (none) kernel: CPU: 0
Oct 12 17:01:05 (none) kernel: EIP: 0010:[<00000000>] Not tainted
Oct 12 17:01:05 (none) kernel: EFLAGS: 00010246
and so on........
The last lines read..
Oct 12 17:01:05 (none) kernel: Modules: [(reiserfs:<c0c00060>:<c0c30f74>)]
Oct 12 17:01:05 (none) kernel: Code: Bad EIP value.
Thank you in advance for your help.
I look forward to hearing from you.
Cheers, William.
Pentium P160
64 Mb memory
Micron Electronics Motherboard
PhoenixBIOS
SCSI Adapter card AHA-2940 ULTRA/ULTRA W
Hard disk CONNER CFP4207SV 4.28Gb
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-- +----------------------------------------------------------------------------+ + Bruce S. Marshall bmarsh@bmarsh.com Bellaire, MI 10/13/03 07:20 + +----------------------------------------------------------------------------+ "A large brain, like large government, may not be able to do simple things in a simple way." - Donald O. Hebb