Intrepid Ibex Installation

[Eberhard Roloff]

Peter Hillier-Brook wrote:
> Craig Huffstetler wrote:
> [cut]
> 
>> For example: Did previous versions of Ubuntu work fine for you
>> (Hardy, possibily even an alpha or beta of Intrepid)? It's only the
>> 32-bit Intrepid final that is failing to boot, which leads me to
>> believe it's something to do with the final kernel included and your
>> hardware. I just wanted to test it against another kernel at boot
>> time.
> 
> Yes, Hardy had no problems and Debian (Lenny) works fine also, but I
> ruled out hardware because of the machine spread. True, 2 are Intel
> Pentium III at 800 MHz, but the third is an AMD Athlon 64+ at 2000 MHz
> with a totally different main board, SATA disks etc.
> 
>> Questions: 1. How far are you getting into your boot-up? Do you get
>> the splash screen, for example (Install Ubuntu/Try Ubuntu Live!).
> 
> I get to the splash screen (past the language check where I successfully
> choose English) and then select the "Check CD for defects". That
> ultimately fails with "Check finished: errors found in 7 files!". The
> errors seem to all fall into the class "[  nn.mmmmmm] end_request: I/O
> error, dev sr0, sector xxxx
> 
>> 2. Are you receiving any errors when you boot-up for installation on
>> the failed attempts? This seems to be what you are pointing to. If
>> so, what are they?
> 
> I only tried installation once and observed similar errors. I'm very
> reluctant to try again as I don't want to wreck a perfectly good Hardy
> installation.. I know that sounds irrational, but whilst I don't mind
> re-installing I don't want to be left with a lump of useless iron if the
> installation fails:-)
> 
>> 3. Is it the same error every time? 4. The only thing that made the
>> final attempt successful for installation was simply that it was the
>> 64 bit variant?
> 
> Not true. Similar failures occurred with the 64 bit variant, but finally
> ceased after the DVD-RW experiment, suggesting that something is flaky,
> but not totally broken. In a previous life, many years ago, I wrote 
> device error recovery code and it looks here as if someone in just not 
> trying to recover an error
> 
> Thanks a lot for your interest.
> 
> Peter HB
> 
For a start, I would think that the CDs and/or drives might be faulty.

well maybe your CD drives are a bit old and worn, especially the PIIIs'.
I would burn the CD, then successfully check with
sudo dd if=/dev/scd1 | md5sum
(assuming that /dev/scd1 is your CD-drive). Only after successfully 
checking, use the CD for installation. Should the install still fail, 
you should do the same test on the very machine that fails and see 
whether there are differences.

In regard to the CD/DVD phenominum: My drive here, a five year old NEC, 
burns DVD faultlessly each time (md5sum always checked and compared), 
while CD burning more often fails than I would like to see.

kind regards
Eberhard