Re: Mandrake installation troubles

[Bruce Smith <bruce@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

> Boy, this is frustrating. I spent over three hours yesterday trying to
> install Linux (Mandrake 7.0) on a P133. I'm not trying to dual-boot or
> anything special. Yet every time it gets to the boot loader installation, it
> reports "there was a problem" and gives me the "opportunity" to try again. I
> tried several times to install it with the custom options, setting up
> partitions to my liking, but it wouldn't finish. Finally I gave up and
> selected the pre-fab "server" option (because Mandrake seems to imply that
> there's something special about the partition named "/boot", but I couldn't
> find anything specific), and it still did the same thing.

Try making a small /boot partition at the very beginning of the disk.

Also make sure you have LBA turned on in the BIOS, and you have the
BIOS set to "_NON_ PNP operating system".

> I also got a failure during the step where it tried to configure the
> network. I have a 'no-name-brand' generic 10/100 Ethernet card, and I tried
> each and every selection from the list of drivers offered, but the install
> never detected the card.

Do you have the ethernet card working in Windows (or another OS)?
If so, look at the hardware settings there and see what driver
it's using, along with all the port and IRQ settings.

Otherwise, look closely at the chips on the card.  The numbers
printed on the chips may give some clue what chipset it is.

--------------------------------------------
Bruce Smith                bruce@armintl.com
System Administrator / Network Administrator
Armstrong International, Inc.
Three Rivers, Michigan  49093  USA
http://www.armstrong-intl.com/
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