diagnosing possible hardware problem

[Constantine Evans]

I apologise for so many people here not understanding your method of 
installation. The standard way of installing Ubuntu is with a CD, and it 
appears that many people don't know about network based installs. Which 
is a pity, because they are very nice, especially since they don't 
require a CD, and are so flexible.

Felix Miata wrote:
> I've been having all kinds of strange problems installing and using ubuntu
> and its various desktop flavors on 3 i440BX systems for over a week and a
> half. Most of the problems seem to be connected to one of the 3 HDs I've
> used, even though I've run the Seatools diagnostic program on it, which
> claims there is no problem with the device. A new 80 pin cable changed
> nothing. I've also run memtest86+ for over 8 hours without errors. The
> various errors include, but are not limited to:
> 
> installer packaging errors
> installer can't find kernel to install
> apt-get/dpkg errors (e.g. tarfile corruption)
> file not found errors
> CRC errors

All of those really point toward the hard drive. I wouldn't trust the 
diagnostic program - have you tried running badblocks on the drive?

> I was not able to get a working installation without using the installation
> kernel parameters acpi=off and ide=nodma. I haven't been able to find any
> clues in /var/log anywhere, but I tend to think most of the errors are (old)
> hardware compatibility issues with their main root in the Seagate HD.

acpi=off is probably required because a systems probably don't have 
ACPI, and nodma is quite possibly a similar issue. How old are these, 
and what are there specs?

> Right now I have the Xubuntu desktop running, and booted on acpi=off and
> noapic kernel parameters. Is there something already installed or that I can
> apt-get that will rigorously test the hardware and report any errors it
> finds? Is there one particular situation that results in CRC errors?
> 
> TIA

Badblocks for the hard drive. memtest for the memory. But it really 
sounds like the hard drive, in which case badblocks should be what you 
need. I wouldn't try to use the drive by disabling the blocks that 
badblocks reports as bad though - this generally results in catastrophic 
failure eventually (though it might take longer with older drives).