HELP!!! please...I am trying in vain to install Redhat Linux 7 on my Dell P2-266 laptop and when I boot off the cd the install stops at:
running sbin/loader

the system just hangs there and I have no clue how to resolve this...I have 4 drives on the system of which 2 definately have enough space....please advse...

Have you tried creating the boot floppy and booting from that?

I haven't seen it on laptops, but have seen some servers lockup during installs while doing hardware detection.. also.

I tried booting from an 'image' created floppy, the boot disk provided with the software and from the cd-rom....nothing seems to work...

It gets you to the "boot:" prompt at least or does it?

If it does.. try the "text" based install.

Look for your specific notebook here:

http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/kharker/linux-laptop/

a text install will work, happened on my laptop too!

I tried it on VMWare and got the same problem. It just hangs when it gets to the "running /sbin/loader" line. I tried text mode and regular mode. Also tried with SCSI only or with IDE drives. I also disabled all devices that were not necessary.

Hmm, this new version isn't giving me a good initial impression.

Update2: Still in a VMWare session, I also tried on another Pentium based CPU machine, with the same results. (The above machine has a K6-2.)

[Edited by dimeglio on 04-19-2001 at 08:42 PM]

Have you tried Dell's tech support website?

with my Sony Vaio SR11K installing Redhat 7.1.

Got the:

http://hepwww.ph.qmw.ac.uk/~pd/sr11k/

guide but its for RH 6.2 and the installation looks different...

Anyway did somebody got it to work yet? any directions on what area the problem might be at?

Would it help to install an older version of redhat and then upgrade to 7.1 or would the same problem come back again? Any suggestions?

Thx,

Duval

Similar problem here with installation of Redhat v7.1

I am booting from floppy or from cdrom. Tried all options
from GUI install, expert install, text install. In each case
the hardware detection lines fly by the screen until the
process comes to

/sbin/loader

This is where is stalls. In the GUI case this simply ends
up as a blue screen.

After some time, the process turns to anaconda, and reports
an error 11 back, shuts down the various loaded system
components.

I can imagine this to be a hardware problem. I've tried to
install 7.1 on an AMD Thunderbird with ASUS board and
512 M RAM

I also tried an older ASUS board with Pentium 200. Same
result.

No clue what is causing this RedHat blue screen of death...
but it looks like a RedHat install bug, or a video card related
bug perhaps. I am using an ATI all-in-wonder, the other system
is a Matrox Millenium video card.

Well, hope this info can be of use to someone and help resolve
it. If I find out more, I'll post it.

Ho Chi Minh

Hello, I would try to fdisk /mbr, it sounds like its currupted. IF that doesnt work make sure lilo makes the loader on the MBR. good luck

Are you booting to the CD? If so.. have you tried booting to the install floppy instead?

Have you tried doing an FTP install?

Have you tried a different CD? Is this a burned, copied, or retail CD?

Thanks for your suggestions, Stimm and KevinJ.

I don;t know what this loader actually loads, but somehow
I don't think it's something like the mbr (master boot record?)

Here is some more info. I indeed downloaded the ISO imagines
from the web, and then burned CDs with EasyCD. I am not
sure that this is what causes the problem, since I am able
to boot from CD fine.

In the older system, I have a Western Digital drive which is
formatted with WDigital software. I also have a SCSI
disk in that machine, and that's where I want to install
REdHat 7.1

Actually I did succeed in installing the system with the FTP
install method yesterday night. So the system is now up
and running on the older machine.

That P200 / Asus machine is somewhat more complex,
because the CD rom is SCSI (Plextor, Tekram DC-390F).
Once booted from SCSI, the OS tries to find a driver for
the SCSI card. Hair-raising balance act... It does seem
to get beyond that stage on the CD install. As I said, the
crash comes with the /sbin/loader -- on both of my computers.

My suspicion now is that there is indeed some problem with
the burnt CDs. If the other machine also install fine via FTP
then this must have been the problem. I will report if the
other system also install fine. It's always nice when problems dissolve into thin air...



ho_chi_minh

i was just reading a post somewhere around here where they discovered that the ati all-in-wonder cards weren't supported yet under linux.

Yeah.. I suspect you either got a bad burn or download somehow. It happens. It even happens with retail CD's.

Glad you got it working.