Installation problems with compaq notebook

[Padmanabhan Krishnan]

Dear all,
I was trying to install Redhat Linux 8.0 in my notebook which is compaq Presario 2580us model. It already has Windows XP running on it.
I created a partition using Partition Commander and all i did was put the linux installation DVD and reboot.
It initially hung at the very beginning while reading the partition, i overcame (not sure whether it's solved) it by giving linux ide=nodma in text mode. Then it had similar problems as mentioned in this site which i solved with nofirewire option as suggested.

Not, it hangs while initializing PCI devices, which is the next step.

It seems to hang at every step. Am i missing something very basic? I haven't even gone to the stage where it starts anaconda.

Any help is greatly appreciated.

Thanks a lot.

Regards,
Padu

[Bruce Copeland]

What you describe is actually pretty common for notebooks--especially ones that aren't officially supported under Linux. Nevertheless, many of us have been successful installing and using Linux on various notebooks. It is quite common to have to use the boot commands nopcmcia, nousb, nofirewire, ide=nodma, and occasionally nomce. Try any or all of these and see if the installation works. You can also find more information about installing and running Linux on HP/Compaq notebooks at my site:

http://www.cybersym.com/pages/linux-ze4100.html

Information contained there is generally applicable to most of the HP ze4000/ze5000 series and the Compaq Presario 2100, 2500 sand EVO 1000 series.

Bruce

[Martin P.J. Zinser]

Another common problem is powermanagement. Try to pass acpi=off to your kernel.

I do type this on an Compaq Evo N150 notebook running W2k (rarely) and SuSE 8.2

Good luck,

Martin

[Hoefnix]

I know SuSE has during setup a sort of Fail-safe settings(disable Power mngmt etc.) to install your system. I always managed to install my SuSE distro on a laptop using this.(or another install option that restricted the hardware use)
I don't now if RH gives you these option?

Regards,

Peter

[Padmanabhan Krishnan]

Dear all,

Thanks a lot for your replies. I gave all the options and now i was able to install Redhat 8.0 Linux. The first step is over :-)

Now, when linux starts it hangs when it tries to bring up the ethernet interface. I have a cable modem connected to my Ethernet port through the RJ45cable. Maybe, i should start it in interactive mode now and disable eth for the timebeing to get linux running.

Any suggestions as whether i should use a new ethernet driver for my model (Compaq presario 2580 us) if the one supplied by Redhat 8.0 doesn't work on this?

I also gave all these options in the grub boot loader when it was installing it. So, linux will be started everytime with all these options. I am not sure i am being too safe here. Just wanted to get it running initially before i begin to make it efficient.

I am anyway planning to go over the mail archives to see if this question is already posted (I know i should have done this first :-)). But just started my day with this E-ail...

Thanks a lot again.

Regards.
Padu

[Bruce Copeland]

As far as I know, the ethernet driver for this hardware is pretty rock solid. Try booting without the cable modem connected and see what happens. Also be aware that in more recent kernels, the source of a boot hang doesn't always correlate very well with the boot steps that get posted on the screen. It's entirely possible that something besides the ethernet setup is hanging.

Usually you don't need all the original installation boot options in your final setup. If you chose grub for your setup, you can edit your boot line at startup. That allows you to selectively test removing different boot options to see if the boot succeeds. Once you find out what you don't need, then you can go into /boot/grub/grub.conf and remove those options more permanently. You can do something similar if you use lilo, but it's been so long since I used lilo on a linux system that it's probably better for you to get instructions from someone else.

Bruce