Pavilion 511N and running LINUX

[Robert M Haas]

I have attempted to install Red Hat 9, Red Hat 9 Pro, WS 3, Fedora 3 and 4 as well as SuSE 9 and 9.1 onto a Pavilion 511N 1.3GHz Celeron with standard Lomita configuration except to add a Viper video card and have failed at every attempt. The base unit with 1MB of Video RAM would not install even in text mode.

I have swapped memory, CD drives, hard drives and removed the modem without success.
I did install Red Hat 9 Pro onto another system and move the drive over and it has worked pretty well so far, but that is the only version that has succeeded.

Typically, the process configures all the way through to copying and installing files and then it says that the media is bad, the drive is full or some other error has occured. The drives are blank 20GB and the disks are often original or have worked on other systems.

After putting in many hours attempting to do this and searching the internet, please let me know if this just won't run LINUX right or if there is some fix to make. I have 2 of these and thought setting up a LINUX network would be easier with the same system types.

Thank you

[Stuart Browne]

Are you using the text-based install, or using the GUI install?

Given the description you've given so far, it sounds like you are getting dodgey reads off the CD drive at the end. But given you're replace the drive, I guess the next question to ask is "did you replace the IDE cable ?".

Try doing an install again, but instead of watching the main screen, use CTRL-SHIFT-ALT-F3/4, and watch the status screens, so we can get a better idea of where it's going belly up.

[Robert M Haas]

I'll try this. With the Red Hat versions, the failures did occur kind of late on disc 1 and fairly consistently when starting disc 2.

I got further with SuSE when this happened because it gave Abort, Retry, Ignore and I ignored as far as it would let me. RedHat just tells offers OK to reboot computer.

Is there a solution to the disc problem?
Copy CD discs to another drive and install from one hard disk to another? Make and DVD bootable and copy to DVD and run that? Would it find the right place on the DVD to start the next disc installation? How best to do this?

Thanks

[Robert M Haas]

Oh yes, I have clicked the details on SuSE and see the install trail on RedHat and it lists what does not load. What do I do with this information?

[Stuart Browne]

For RH/Fedora, you could always try a network install. Put the contents of the disks on an FTP/HTTP/NFS server on your network, and do it that way.

Is this a possibility? As it seems as if the IDE bus on the Pavillion isn't all that happy. (This is something I've seen on other systems over time, but Network installs generally work).

[Alan_152]

Do you get the same results trying to boot off of a livecd like knoppix or ubuntu?