Intrepid Ibex Installation

[James Tappin]

On Tue, 03 Mar 2009 23:50:43 +0100
Eberhard Roloff <tuxebi at gmx.de> wrote:

ER> Peter Hillier-Brook wrote:
ER> > Craig Huffstetler wrote:
ER> > [cut]
ER> > 
ER> >> For example: Did previous versions of Ubuntu work fine for you
ER> >> (Hardy, possibily even an alpha or beta of Intrepid)? It's only the
ER> >> 32-bit Intrepid final that is failing to boot, which leads me to
ER> >> believe it's something to do with the final kernel included and your
ER> >> hardware. I just wanted to test it against another kernel at boot
ER> >> time.
ER> > 
ER> > Yes, Hardy had no problems and Debian (Lenny) works fine also, but I
ER> > ruled out hardware because of the machine spread. True, 2 are Intel
ER> > Pentium III at 800 MHz, but the third is an AMD Athlon 64+ at 2000 MHz
ER> > with a totally different main board, SATA disks etc.
ER> > 
ER> >> Questions: 1. How far are you getting into your boot-up? Do you get
ER> >> the splash screen, for example (Install Ubuntu/Try Ubuntu Live!).
ER> > 
ER> > I get to the splash screen (past the language check where I successfully
ER> > choose English) and then select the "Check CD for defects". That
ER> > ultimately fails with "Check finished: errors found in 7 files!". The
ER> > errors seem to all fall into the class "[  nn.mmmmmm] end_request: I/O
ER> > error, dev sr0, sector xxxx
ER> > 
ER> >> 2. Are you receiving any errors when you boot-up for installation on
ER> >> the failed attempts? This seems to be what you are pointing to. If
ER> >> so, what are they?
ER> > 
ER> > I only tried installation once and observed similar errors. I'm very
ER> > reluctant to try again as I don't want to wreck a perfectly good Hardy
ER> > installation.. I know that sounds irrational, but whilst I don't mind
ER> > re-installing I don't want to be left with a lump of useless iron if the
ER> > installation fails:-)
ER> > 
ER> >> 3. Is it the same error every time? 4. The only thing that made the
ER> >> final attempt successful for installation was simply that it was the
ER> >> 64 bit variant?
ER> > 
ER> > Not true. Similar failures occurred with the 64 bit variant, but finally
ER> > ceased after the DVD-RW experiment, suggesting that something is flaky,
ER> > but not totally broken. In a previous life, many years ago, I wrote 
ER> > device error recovery code and it looks here as if someone in just not 
ER> > trying to recover an error
ER> > 
ER> > Thanks a lot for your interest.
ER> > 
ER> > Peter HB
ER> > 
ER> For a start, I would think that the CDs and/or drives might be faulty.
ER> 
ER> well maybe your CD drives are a bit old and worn, especially the PIIIs'.
ER> I would burn the CD, then successfully check with
ER> sudo dd if=/dev/scd1 | md5sum
ER> (assuming that /dev/scd1 is your CD-drive). Only after successfully 
ER> checking, use the CD for installation. Should the install still fail, 
ER> you should do the same test on the very machine that fails and see 
ER> whether there are differences.
ER> 
ER> In regard to the CD/DVD phenominum: My drive here, a five year old NEC, 
ER> burns DVD faultlessly each time (md5sum always checked and compared), 
ER> while CD burning more often fails than I would like to see.

That's very probable. Just one thing to add, you don't need dd:
md5sum /dev/sdc0
works just fine.

-- 
+------------------------+-------------------------------+---------+
| James Tappin           | School of Physics & Astronomy |  O__    |
| sjt at star.sr.bham.ac.uk | University of Birmingham      | --  \/` |
| Ph: 0121-414-6462. Fax: 0121-414-3722                  |         |
+--------------------------------------------------------+---------+