Hi, I've been trying to install Linux (RedHat) on my old Sony Vaio laptop, and having a problem.
The booting from the floppy disk works fine, but after that the rest of the files are not recognized. The hard drive is partitioned into 2 (C: and D and there is a DVD-rom, and it has windows XP installed.
Any comment is welcomed!! I'm so frustrated!

Thanks-

Hello and welcome to LQ, hope you like it here.

The booting from the floppy disk works fine, but after that the rest of the files are not recognized.
Where are the files? On CDROM, floppy, partition, network?
What is the error? (may have to press CTRL+ALT + F1 through F4 to see more messages)
What's the distribution and release you're trying to install?
What's the VAIO type?

Hi, thanks for responding!

Where are the files? On CDROM, floppy, partition, network?
--> They are on a CD (Actually two CDs), and I also copied & pasted to D: drive.
--> Partition was done by Sony, so there are two C:, and D: drives.
--> I don't have a network card for this particular laptop, so I don't have an access to a network....


What is the error? (may have to press CTRL+ALT + F1 through F4 to see more messages)

--> When I tried to use install from CD-rom, the CD-rom makes sound for a while as if trying to find the files and says there is no CD.
When I tried to install from a hard drive, it says that there are two harddrives (1 and 5), then, whether I select one or the other, it says there is no file images on the hard drive.


What's the distribution and release you're trying to install?

---> It's REdHat 3.0 and I got the copy from my school (University of Maryland in Baltimore County, UMBC)


What's the VAIO type?

---> It's PCG-F650, and it came as Windows Me but I installed Windows XP a couple of years ago. The CD rom is Toshiba DVD-rom.

I'll wait for your response. Thank you very much!

Have you burnt the .iso file corectly to cd. It sounds like you do not have a bootable cd. To check brouse the cd in windows, if all you see is a iso file you have burnt it wrong. When burning make sure you select a some project with a name like burn image file in your cd burning softwear. If this is not the case test your system with another bootable cd you may have lying aroung like the windwos install disk or download a copy of knoppix and try that in your drive (after burning it with as an image file again). Also check that on your bios you have cd as the fist item in your boot sequence.

Hi, thanks for your response.

This is the insturction that I followed to burn the RedHat CD.
-->
The distribution consists of 2 ISO images.
Both of these ISO images are required to complete an install of UMBC RedHat.
Download the following ISO images and burn them onto CD:

Is there any other way to burn it correctly?


And, the CD-rom is the first in the booting sequence.

First lets find out if you have burt them correctly. Do as I stated in my first post and brouse the cds in windows. If all you see is an .iso file you have done it wrong if you see lotts of folders and other files you have done it correctly.

If you only see a .iso file when you go into nero or what ever cd burning package you use do not choose burn a data project somewhere maybe in a menu named project there should be somthing like burn an image file or burn and .iso file or burn an image cd or some thing like that. Choose THAT option and burn your image to cd.

There are lots of folders and files like you described.
I think the school already has burnt it as an image files and let us download as it is.

Good.
Now see if you can find your winxp install disk pop that in to check that the computer is fine with bootable cds. It should be fine as you said you installed xp a few years ago but it is good practice to systamaticaly rule everything out. If the computer boots the winxp cd fine we need to check the FC cds. Try your FC cd on another computer to see if they boot. You never know it may be a dodgy burn and you may need to get some new cds. Also do like I suggested and download a knoppix cd http://www.knoppix.org/ (best to do at your uni as they always have excellent doanload speeds) burn the iso to cd and try and boot off of this. This will also give you a feel for linux without an install and see what hardwear gets auto detected. Good luck!

EDIT: this thread has some points about lower burning speed and boot disk although is seems as if you are alsready using a boot disk.
http://www.fedoraforum.org/forum/showthread.php?t=21823

Also this post seem to sujest a problem with old cd drive and needing new drivers.
http://www.linuxforums.org/forum/ins...eck-fails.html

Hi, thanks for the answer. I'll try what you said when I get home this evening and will post the result then. I can't wait to see what's going to happen!

good luck and check the EDIT on my last post.

Hi, Brick,
I'm still in the process of trying your suggestions.
I didn't have much time to do all last night, but I just have one more question.
If I want to install linux from hard drive, is there any way to do it?
I tried to copy all the files from the RedHat image CD to C drive and D drive as well, but the partition is done by Sony recovery-CDs that came with the laptop as I mentioned before.
Which hard drive or which folder should I place those file to install linux?
Thanks-

Hello, Don't worry just take your time there is no need to get every thing done in one day.

I have herd somewhere that redhat can be installed from the harddrive directly but I have no knolage of that myself as I do not run redhat. The standard way is to use cds or dvds. Remember google is your friend try googleing for tips on how to install FC from harddrive.

I sugest you take a look at http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Distribution/Download
For some tips.

When you have tested your computer, and may be installed new cd drivers as sugested in one of the links I gave from people who had similar problems you will need to repartition your harddrive. This is talked about in the link above. If you do not have partition magic try gparted http://gparted.sourceforge.net/livecd.php , it is free and has worked well for me.

Something I just noticed you talk about redhat 3.0, I may be wrong but I think this is a couple of years old. I would download a new copy of Fedora core http://fedora.redhat.com/ 5 seems to be the lastest releace (Fedora is Redhat's comunity edition). Then take a look at

http://www.stanton-finley.net/fedora...ion_notes.html

This guy seems to have done quite a good job at domumenting an install. Fedora is a popular distrabution among newies and expearienced people alike so there is lots of info out there.

Sorry if I am not all that clear in my explaination and jumping around alot. Checkout the links I have given you, I know you are probibly keen to get on and dive in but take some time to prepare by reading some of the info that is out there and how other people have delt with it. Good luck. Let us know how you get on.

Hi, Brick,
I hope you had a nice weekend.
I had time to try things that you suggested during the weekend.
I did not try WinXP boot CD, but I restored the laptop with the original Sony system recovery CD because I couldn't play some of the DVD after I installed WinXP.
Then, I downloaded Knoppix and tried it on the laptop DVD-rom.
First of all, it worked! and I was able to run Knoppix from the CD.

I tried to install it on the hard drive, but that part did not go through.
I followed the instruction from Knoppix website and typed in the command line, but it says there is no such command : "sudo knx-hdinstall"

Then, I couldn't edit or write a program using CD-based Knoppix..

Another problem was that I was trying to save my file and it wouldn't let me save on the hard drive. But, it let me save the file on a USB drive.

So, it's not 100% what I wanted, but I can write my command lines using emax and evaluate what I wrote using Knoppix to see if it runs fine.

Do you know if there is any more thing I can try to make this simpler?

Thank you very much!!

Well done. I know this seems like a long task but I am not a guru so I have to work through things systamatically. Also you will learn alot as well with any luck (as will I ).

Please read all of this post before doing anything.

So lets recape what we now know / have done.

Your red hat cds would not boot. These where burnt correctly. You down loaded and burnt knoppix. This boots your system into linux. From this we can deduce that your computer is booting fine from cd and your red hat cds must have an error on them. Now you are having trouble trying to install knoppix on your hard drive and saving to disk.

Ok I shall start with the last problem first. You currently have windows XP on your system. windows XP uses the NTFS file system. While this is a fine file system linux can not write to NTFS. A file system which both linux and windows can write to is fat32, this was used on win 98, 95 e.t.c and is file for most files up to 4gig I think. Removable storage devices such as usbkeys are virtually all formatted with FAT32, hence why you can save to your usbkey but not your hd (hard drive).

To beable to write to your hard drive from knoppix (or any other linux distro) you will nedd to repartion your hard drive so that it has a fat32 section. This can be done with partition magic (good but costs money) or the free gparted (has 90% of the features of partition magic) which has always worked for me. So after partioning say a 100gig hard drive from windows you would see something like c: NTFS 70 gig D: Fat32, obveously you would choose your own % of devition between the two but this is just an example. But wait! Before you go doing this you may need to partition your hard drive in a diffrent way depending on what your intentions are. This is what you should do if you whish to only run linux from your cd like knoppix but still wish to be able to save to the hard drive.

If you want to install linux to your hard drive you will also need a partition of your hard drive that has a linux file system on it. There are many to choose from and many installers with common distros will do this for you and choose the file system so don't worry too much at the moment about the diffrences between diffrent file systems. There is some more info about partitioning your hard drive here http://www.linux.com/article.pl?sid=06/07/20/1654251
. So on our 100 gig hard drive we could now end up with say 40gig NTFS for windows 20 gig FAT32 (a drive so we may swap file between windows and linux) and 40 gig some linux file system (part of which we would have as swap (see later)). Many people further partition their linux partition for diffrent parts of the file system, for instance they may have a section for /home where all of their file are stored so they may reinstall linux without loosing files. The linux section of your hard drive will always have a least two partions on it. One for genral file sytem use and one for swap. Swap is the same as virtual memory in windows but linux needs a predefined place to use as swap. Like I said most linux installers will take care of this for you but it is usful to know about these things

Now to install knowppix to the hard drive I looked up http://www.freenet.org.nz/misc/knoppix-install.html and there are many more listed here

http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en...G=Search&meta=

But still wait! There are easier ways of getting linux on your hard drive.

But now we know there is nothing wrong with your computer interms of booting from the cd drive it is probibly fair to say the copy of red hat you got from college had an error. It is also esaier to keep knoppix as a backup / diognostic tool and use another distrbution to install on to your hard drive. These will set up a grub chain loader (as mentioned in the link about installing knoppix to your hard drive) automatically they will also deal with partitioning everything for you. Easy install distos are mepis (very newbie friendly from what I hear http://www.mepis.org/), unbuntu (http://www.ubuntu.com/), Fedora core the comunity vertion of red hat (http://fedora.redhat.com/), and SUSE (http://www.novell.com/products/suselinux/).

I think one of these will be easyest to install to your hard drive but the knoppix expearment was usful to diognose any porblems with hardwear. I think your biggest problem is first that I answered your question and have ranted on in far to much detail and second that you where unlucky with your burn of redhat. I hope I have not boared you to much I do go on a bit.

Now read this post, check out the links, do some googling, down load one or as many of the distros I listed there are many more out there and try and install one. If you have any questions come back and ask.


Good luck and let us know how you get on.