I am trying to install Red Hat 9 as the sole OS on an old P166MMX with 64 MB RAM, which formerly ran Win98/Red Hat 7 dual boot. The machine would otherwise be collecting dust, so I would like to put it to use as a Linux box so I can maybe learn something from it.

The C drive is formatted and empty with 10GB free. The D partition on the second HD (3.2 GB total) is still intact (FAT32) but is not bootable, and I really don't care what happens to it. The remaining partitions on the second HD are EXT2 (I think) from an earlier Red Hat 7 install that no longer boots successfully. I do have Partition Magic, so I could make changes to the partitions, but with no Windows install CD available it's useless AFAIK.

MD5SUM checks are successful for all three ISOs. So I burned them to CD-R at 24X (CDs are rated at 24X) using Nero. Running a media check during installation always fails. Not surprisingly, depending on which install method I choose (text, graphical, expert, etc.) it bails out with a different error message, always beginning with
'import site' failed; use -v for traceback
such as:

File "/usr/bin/anaconda", line 539
hsync = mon)torhw.getMonitorHorizSync()
^
SyntaxError: invalid syntax
...

or

File "/usr/bin/anaconda", line 529
import rhp1.guesslcd as 'guesslcd
...

Sometimes it doesn't even get that far, ending in:

Please append a correct "root=" boot option
Kernel panic: VFS: Unable to mount root fs on 48:05

Is the fact I used 700MB CD-Rs and burned them at 24X a possible problem? I have coasterized 4 CDs already, and am hesitant to waste any more trying different permutations and combinations. It seems not to make much difference whether I finalize the CD or not, though I think it helps.

Alternatively, could it be a hardware issue? A possible clue might be the fact I was unable to successfully boot either Win98 or Red Hat 7 recently, which lead me to do the format in the first place. Or do I need to format in EXT2 or EXT3 before installing?

Any suggestions as to what I should do (other than scrapping the machine for parts or throwing it out the window ) would be appreciated. Thanks.

personally i don't burn my iso's that fast. i have my overburn protection on, but still.

i would try and burn just the first at a slower speed and see what happens with that. if it works then drop the speed for the rest of them. if not, don't know what to tell you, sorry.

good luck.

Thanks for your reply, emetib. I tried your suggestion and burned at only 4x, but I got the same error message again. My only idea now is that maybe you can't use 700MB CDs. I will have to buy some 650s and see if that helps. I've now got five new coasters, and only one blank disk left, so I need to buy new disks anyway.

As an update, I tried using 650 MB CDs, burning at 4x and finalizing the CD and it still didn't help, although I got different error messages than what I was getting before.

I burnt my RH9 isos at 48 speed on 700 MB cdrs - all perfect. Perhaps the time has come to get some cheap shipped cds, or if you're in the UK, I could post you a set that I know work.

Thanks for your reply, carlywarly.

On a hunch, I tried something I should have about 4 coasters ago: I did a mediacheck on the latest CD with my P4 machine, and it passed! This despite the fact that the same CD failed on the P-166.

Why might this be? My guess is that the 16x CD-ROM drive (circa 1997) in the P166 is too old to read CD-Rs properly. I know it doesn't handle CD-RWs at all. I don't recall ever having a problem with that drive before with CD-Rs, though, and I know an older 1995 model 4x CD-ROM drive I tried swapping in at one point exhibits the same problems described in my initial post. I tested this when I initially suspected the 16x unit might be faulty. Maybe this is the case, and I'll just have to spend some $ and get a new cheap replacement CD-ROM drive. Otherwise the P-166 is pretty much useless. Or better yet, I might pull out the CD-ROM drive from my P4 machine and see if it will work in the P-166. Obviously this is not a long term solution, but it might save wasting money on a new CD drive if that is not, in fact, the source of the problem.

Anyways, that's the state of things for now.

BTW, did you check the Red Hat Linux 9 Release Notes for minimum hardware requirements?

# Cheap CDs
Discount Linux CDs
Linux Central
Cheapbytes
TuxCDs
ComputerHelperGuy

Yes, I'd looked at the release notes previously, and my hardware does meet the minimum requirements (even if CPU is slightly below the recommended speed).

Thanks for the links to cheap Linux CDs, but since I now know my CDs are good, because they pass media check on my P4, ordering new CDs from one of these sites probably won't help.

In followup to my previous post, I tried putting the DVD-ROM drive from my P4 machine into the P-166, and then ran the mediacheck on the same CD that passed when that drive was in the P4, but it still failed!

So the problem is clearly not with the CD-ROM drive, but I'm not sure now what it could be. There must be something seriously wrong with the hardware, but solutions to this are not Linux-specific, and are most likely a topic for a different discussion forum. I'm tempted now to just give up. This old PC doesn't owe me anything anyway. Nevertheless, I'd still welcome any other suggestions that might help me spare the machine from its imminent job as a door stop.

Can (such an old thing) switch off DMA in its BIOS? Maybe you have a problem with the speed of incoming data on the bus of your machine.

You are doing the text install (you only have 64 mb RAM), right?

Yes, on any type of install: text, graphical, noprobe, etc., the installation always fails with an abnormal exit similar to that described in my first post. As for whether the BIOS supports disabling of DMA, I don't see any option for that. The only reference to DMA in the BIOS is ECP DMA Select, currently set to 3.

By the way, the BIOS type is Award PI55T2P4, if that means anything to anyone.

The RAM is set to auto configure as 60ns DRAM. I could disable auto configure and potentially modify the following (current values in parentheses): DRAM Read Burst Timing (x222), DRAM Write Burst Timing (x333), RAS to CAS Delay (3T), DRAM R/W Leadoff Timing (6T/5T), DRAM Turbo Read Leadoff (Disabled), DRAM Speculative Leadoff (Enabled), Peer Concurrency, PCI Streaming, Passive Release, etc. I'm not sure if any of these are relevant, nor what values I would use instead.

The one thing this antique machine has going for it is that it's not so old that it can't boot from CD-ROM--that feature works flawlessly, but little good it does me!

It was suggested to me that perhaps the RAM is bad. I would have thought it wouldn't pass the memory test at POST if that were the case, but it does pass. Regardless, I'm not sure how likely I am to be able to find EDO RAM anymore to replace it with, so I may be out of luck. Maybe I'll have to borrow some RAM from work, where I know we've got some machines of similar vintage. Scary fact is these were still in use as recently as this spring!

Well, so that's not it -- forget about DMA.

Oh, btw. I think you can forget about X on this machine, just this morning I tried for a second Xserver on my box here and got an error, telling me that at least 84 MB are required for X.

I was able to run X under RH7 with no problem. I wasn't breaking any speed records, but it was usable. Has there really been that much change in RH9 that the system requirements have needed to increase substantially? I guess if it happens in other OSes it happens in Linux too.

use vector on the old systems. mine is working great with it. 200mhz cpu with 53m ram.

instead of a door stop, make it into a firestop, i.e. firewall.

cheers.

The changes would be in the X-system, I don't know whether that's really the case ... anyhow I used KNOPPIX when that error came on a machine with 128MB RAM while I tried to open a second session with KDE. Maybe that caused the error here, not X, don't know.