Installing Red Hat Enterprise Linux AS

[Installing Red Hat Ente]

I have a problem very similar to Tim Medford had in June 2006.
I installed Red Hat Enterprise Linux AS 4 on Dell Inspiron 1501 notebook. Initially it didint recognize my SATA HDD. I had to use parameter all-generic-ide. After that everything went perfectly during the installation until the reboot time came. It starts rebooting just fine, seems to find the kernel and begin loading. Then messages appear:

Decompressing Linux done
Booting the kernel.
audit (1170262029.359.0): initialized
Red Hat nash version 4.1.18 starting.

File Descriptor 3 left open
Reading all physical volumes

File Descriptor 3 left open
/dev/hda: open failed : no medium found
/dev/hda: open failed : no medium found
No volume groups found

File Descriptor 3 left open
/dev/hda: open failed : no medium found
/dev/hda: open failed : no medium found
No volume groups found

File Descriptor 3 left open
/dev/hda: open failed : no medium found
/dev/hda: open failed : no medium found
No volume groups found


Mount error 6 mounting ext3
Mount error 2 mounting none
switchroot: mount failed :22
umount /initrd/dev failed: 2
kernel panic - not syncing : attempted to kill init!

Please let me know how to get the system to boot with Red hat Enterprise Linux AS 4.

Thanx
Shantanu

[Andrew Cowan · Accepted solution]

Shantanu,

You need a driver diskette that you load when you boot the Linux Kernel. Normally when the installation completes, you get the message: "Congratulations....Pres any key to reboot".

At this point press Ctrl-Alt-F2 to switch to a text console, insert and mount your driver floppy and then install it as per the manufacturer's instructions. e.g:

mkdir /floppy
mount /tmp/dddev /floppy
sh /floppy/setup
umount /floppy

Press Ctrl-Alt-F7, then reboot.

[Installing Red Hat Ente]

Andrew,

Thank you for your response. I further have a doubt. Which drivers are we talking about here? And I have a Dell notebook, no floppy drive. If you can specify the drivers which I need, so I can burn them on a cd and then follow the steps which you mentioned in your previous reply. Please reply whenver you get chance.

Thanks again
tc

Shantanu

[Andrew Cowan]

You could use a USB memory key or USB floppy drive but you'll just have to work out the device name in order to mount it. If neither are available you could burn a new copy of your install CD, or mount it on a network drive, along with the drivers.

The driver files will normally come with your hardware, or can be downloaded from the manufacturer's website. The problem here is that they may not support Linux, and the hardware could be OEM'd, thus it can be very hard to identify. The files themselves will normally be added to the kernel drivers directory, and possibly the "grub.conf" may also be modified.

[Andrew Cowan]

The drives we are talking about are the ones for the SATA disks.

[Steven E. Protter]

Shalom,

Your haradware may not be certified.

Your best chance of success is to use AS 4 update 4.

The SATA driver from Red Hat's website is needed. If that doesn't work see if Dell has one on http://support.dell.com

If that doesn't work, switch the OS or hardware. RH has told us they have certified laptops listed on their website.

SEP

[Installing Red Hat Ente]

Hello Andrew and SEP for your prompt responses.

I have a Hitachi SATA HDD on the notebook. I talked to DELL technical support and they said they didnt have the drivers for that HDD.

Any SATA HDD searched from Internet won't work right? I need the drivers for that particular Hitachi HDD model?

Also I had the same problme during installing when RHEL was saying No Hard Drive found and it aborted installation. Then I used parameter "all-generic-ide" and it allowed me to load RHEL successfully.
Are there other parameters which can be applied to successfully load RHEL.

This is a new Dell Inspiron Notebook I got this week and I need to install RHEL.

Currently I do have RHEL AS3.

Do U think, as other option I could install RHEL AS3 and then upgrade it to RHEL AS4 (64 bit version).

Please let me know the work around for this.
I would really appreciate it..
Thanks and regards

Shantanu