Redhat 9 on Pavilion Ze4400

[Erik Frank]

Hello Everybody,
I am new to Linux and tried to install Redhat 9.0 on my Pavilion ze4400 Notebook with an AMD Athlon XP-M Chip, running Windows XP. Booting works fine but when the Software asks me to check the media on the cd I can not use my keyboard anymore. Because of that I then can not continue with the installation process.
Please be so kind to help me out! Thanks in advance already.

Kind regards,
Erik Frank

[Steven E. Protter]

If possible:

Skip the media check.

Its not necessary.

If possible, consider Fedora Core, it handles the hardware a little better.

This line of notebooks has become notorious on this forum for being very difficult to work with in Linux.

SEP

[Bruce Copeland]

Erik:

I agree with SEP about Fedora, but the traditional fix for your problem when installing Red Hat 9 is to boot the installation CD using the nopcmcia parameter. That generally isn't necessary on HP notebook models with Intel processors, but it often is on models that use AMD chips. I wouldn't be surprised if you need to do the same with Fedora. You can find other potentially useful info about Red Hat 9 on ze4000/ze5000 series models at my web site

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

Bruce

[Erik Frank]

Hey Guys,
it's me again. Thank you very much for your help.
I made some progress and got linux installed now, but I still can't get it to work. Once I boot the linux boot routine checks everything with ok and starts making trouble again when it comes to the following line:

localhost login:
Password:

Then it switches to a different screen (blue) called X Protocol Version 11 giving me something like (EE) No devices detected and (77%). I tried to make a screenshot, but unfortunately that didn't work. After I read the message it returns to localhost login again, where I do not know what to type???
I tried "administrator" and then it askes me for the password. Although I don't know the correct password, I can't even type it....the only key working is "Enter".
I really can't figure this out? What am I doing wrong??? I hope you guys can help me out one more time.
Thank you again in advance,

A guy who is desperate to change his OS...

[Erik Frank]

Hey,
it's me again. I somehow fixed the problems of my last post - though it is still a pain in the a** as I have to use interactive setup to set pcmcia and eth0 to no - but for now it's working. I even managed to login with root and the password I set while installing linux. Still in the Redhat Documentation it says I should see the Graphical User Interface which I do not see. I only get the console although I installed Linux in graphic mode. Trying to start it with startx doesn't work. I receive the following error message:

Fatal Server error: no screens found
XIO: Fatal 10 error 104 on X Server

I hope someone can tell me:
1. How to start the GUI I installed
2. How I fix my boot problems (see my last post)
3. How I permanetely start linux in GUI Mode
4. And why it is so hard to get linux running? Is this normal? I just wonder...

Thanks again!

Erik