Can't get Live CD or Install to complete

Hi,

I have been running OpenSUSE 10.3 on two machines for testing - worked great (one new AMD dual boot w/XP HP and an older p4 with Sun’s Virtual Box).

I chose 10.3 because Zimbra’s OpenSource edition has a package for it.

So last week I decided to set up a dedicated server to do a ‘real test’.

The box I picked was a Tyan S5350 server, dual 2.8 Xeon processors, 2 GB ECC RAM, built-in ATI Rage adapter, 2 Broadcom Gbit NICs and an Adaptec 2120S SCSI adapter (64 MB cache) with 2 ultra 320 17.5 GB drives in a RAID 0.

I have currently been testing Windows server 2008 on this machine with no problems. It was a Windows server 2003 production server for about a year.

I had hoped to make a dual boot with Windows server 2008 for more testing, so I had left room for additional partitions on a pair of 80 gig drives. I started with the OopenSUSE i386 install DVD I had been using, just to see what it would do.

The welcome splash came on, and then I got the typical opening menu. You can press return and will it begin the loading of the Linux kernel. Right as it gets to 100%, the screen will go blank, this CD/DVD drive stops reading and you are left with a blank screen with a blinking cursor at the top left. It turns out that it doesn’t matter you choose other video options such as VESA, text, or different resolutions - it’s always going to that blank screen. The same result happens if you chose to Install to drive.

At that point I thought I might have defective media, but I checked it and that’s not the case. On to the matter of testing with some Live CDs - i386 or i686, GNOME or KDE - 10.3 or 11.1 - all the same result.

After some Googling, I had my suspicions about the built-in serial ATA RAID and the Adaptec 2120 driver issues. So being a clever geek I am, I disabled the serial ATA raid on motherboard, pull the Adaptec 2120 – let’s see if one of the Live Cd’s will run now. Nope, exactly the same thing. I tried all the possible combinations – ARRGH!

I felt I had been cursed. So I decided to test another distribution. I pull the original 2 drives, installed 2 spares and configured the RAID. Tada - enter Fedora - installs from the live CD, installs from DVD on 32-bit or 64-bit versions. Works flawlessly.

And the openSUSE items - still no werky…

Of course the only bad part with this last result is I really don’t want Fedora, I have learned to like openSUSE.

Any Ideas ?

I will be so happy if someone calls me a newb and points to a quick fix already cleverly stored somewhere.

:X

My thoughts are to the ATI video, Do you have a spare video card ( not ATI ) you could slip in the rig and temporarily disable the on broad video then run a test with Opensuse? Sounds to me like the x-server is not starting.

That was also my ‘inexpert guess’. A problem with Xserver - on the other hand, don’t all the Linux distro’s use Xserver?

BTW - that was my reasoning with trying the VESA and Text modes, as I understand it the VESA mode is supposed to work with about anything.

X-server fails to start on Fedora 11 box w/o mouse,kbd and monitor - LinuxQuestions.org

As for trying out a different video card, its a real server chassis with a riser card for the 64bit PCI Express card (the Adaptec HBA) - even if I were to pull that, and leave the case open, I don’t actually have any real PCI video cards about, I don’t remember the last time I had one of those - LOL.

Getting back to the Xserver issue, maybe I should find out what parameters Fedora is using to start up Xserver (and what version I guess)? hmmmm?

BUT LOL, I may just get a cheapo PCI XVGA card on Ebay and give that a whirl. I suspect its a parameter issue. I did some serious Googling looking for peeps that couldn’t get Linux to run on that mobo - like no results.

Thanks for your thoughts, and I will keep ya posted.

:wink: