Live CD install fails to detect CD/DVD

English Install/Boot/Login
1

I’m attempting to install 11.1 from LiveCD. The install only gets as far as the opensuse 11.1 screen right after the bootscreen. Things just sort of hang there for about 10 minutes or so and then the system reboots. Since the CD is still in the drive the opensuse boot screen comes up again and the process repeats until I remove the CD and reboot to Windows XP, which is what normally runs on this system.

After staring at the green screen during the 10 minute interval and wondering what was wrong I discovered pressing the escape key suspends the green graphic screen and shows detailed status messages. The last messages to appear are as follows:

-----> probing module pata_via {pauses here for ~10 min}
-----> probing module uhci - hcd
-----> Failed to detect CD/DVD or USB drive!
-----> reboot Exception: error console at Alt - F3/F4
-----> reboot Exception: reboot in 120 sec {which it does}

Choosing the check media option from the bootscreen yields about the same set of messages.

If the CD drive really was bad I would not have gotten this far. Windows diagnostics says the CD drive is functioning normally. And since I have used the drive under Windows I believe it is functioning normally.

Other details:

PC is a HP Pavilion circa 2002.
The CD drive is a Samsung CD-R/RW SW-224B.
Download came from opensuse.org. Checksum says it’s good.

Does anyone have any suggestions on how to proceed from here?

2

It could be a bad burn, try burning the iso at a slower speed.
What software on XP are you using for your burning?

3

I used a product called InfraRecorder to burn the image. I had never used it before. The first CD was burned at full speed. The second at 6X. Same result with both.

Thx.

4

Did you check the iso image if it has been correctly downloaded?

5

I used the md5 check sum to verify that the image was good.

6

That is rather weird as it booted off the cd right :)?? Have you tried some of the “non standard” kernel options?

7

I had this problem once with OS 10.0 or 10.2, not sure which.

If memory serves, the solution was to disable acpi (or apic) during install, with options acpi=no (or noapic). Check these options.

After install the acpi functions worked OK.

8

It might have been a bad download too, its really hard to tell

9

After downloading twice and verifying the image successfully I don’t think this is a download problem. Burning the CD may be another matter.

Since I burned the CD twice and got the same error in the same place twice I think it highly unlikely that the CD volume is faulty.

I checked the supported hardware information and saw nothing on this particular model of CD drive. As a last resort I may try another device, like a flashdrive.

10

I am new to Linux and am not familiar with the kernal options. A pointer to info or brief explanation would help. Thanks.

11

You mean like the difference between 64bit and 32?

12

hooksp wrote:
> I am new to Linux and am not familiar with the kernal options. A
> pointer to info or brief explanation would help. Thanks.

when the first green screen comes up (where you can select for
different things) run the media check just for grins (from what you
say i expect will be ok, if not…bingo)

then, the next time you boot fro the Live CD when you see that boot
screen press the down arrow and type:

noapic

and see if it gets any further along in the boot process…by the
way, let me stop here and say that if you have to use any kernel
option to get the Live CD to run i’d expect you to also have some
troubles with the install…so, for now if i were you i’d JUST run the
live CD, and wait for 11.2 (comes very soon) which may work better
with your hardware (but don’t miss my ideas on your hardware, below)…

if noapic doesn’t work, then the next time try one of these

nolapic
acpi_use_timer_override
acpi=noirq
acpi=off

one at a time…one may work or none may work…

on the other hand, you wrote “PC is a HP Pavilion circa 2002” while
openSUSE 11.1 is newer than Vista and more powerful than Win7 which
i’d bet neither will load on that machine either…huh? how much RAM
you running in that box? see: http://en.opensuse.org/Sysreqs

there are stories of machines with the recommended on that page, but
still less than one gig which won’t run the Live CD…but, you can
install on the machine with the DVD (because it takes more RAM to run
the CD live, than to run openSUSE in hardware…

also, use the forum search function
http://forums.opensuse.org/search.php or google to zoom in on many
different discussion of how and why apparently good cd drives won’t
read every disks thrown at it…

-welcome- i’m sorry your first impression is less than
wonderful…unfortunately many folks raise expectations that today’s
Linux will run like the wind on a last century machine…it ain’t
true…with a circa 8 year old machine you may need to pick a Linux
distro designed for older, less resource enabled hardware…if you
don’t soon find happiness with openSUSE i’d recommend you have a look
at one or more of these:

  • SOAD (SuSE On Active Diet), Possibly the most light weight LiveCD
    based on openSUSE 11.1, is a Russian effort using an “Enlightenment”
    windowing environment. Enlightentment is more light weight than KDE,
    Gnome or XFCE. Read/download from here:
    http://sda.scwlab.com/soad_linux.html

  • Puppy Linux. <http://www.puppylinux.org/> Needs 64MB RAM for
    versions before 1.0.2. More recent versions need 128MB RAM and 166MHZ CPU

  • Elive <http://www.elivecd.org/> (has Enlightenment window manager).
    Needs 100MHz CPU and 64MB of RAM for one of the older versions. More
    recent version needs a faster CPU and more RAM

  • DSL (D**N Small Linux).<http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/> needs 16MB
    RAM on a fast 486 CPU. But that will be slow!! Better off with 64 MB
    RAM and a Pentium with 200MHZ CPU

–
palladium
Have a lot of fun…

13

In the first boot menu use the arrow down key to stop the count down. Then use the F. keys as mentioned at the bottom of the screen. I think it is F5 that will show you a small menu. Select from there and hit return (maybe twice).

14

I see you md5-checked the downloaded images, but you need to check the burnt media as well…

15

I like it!!!

16

The systems uses an AMD Athlon 1.4 GHz, 512 MB RAM (maxed out), and has ~30GB of free disk space.

Your comment on expecting old hardware to run like new makes a good point. Even though this system seems to meet the stated hardware requirements for 11.1 you probably can’t expect stellar results from a machine this old.

My intent was to try to get some use out of this old hardware before consigning it to the junk heap. Perhaps a smaller OS is in order.

Thanks for your comments.

17

You could use the DVD to install openSUSE on it, i installed 11.1 on my mother’s PC which has a 2.2GHz Celeron(much crappier than your athlon) and 512 MB of ram and believe me it is running KDE 4.3 just fine (maybe not as fast as on my PC but it runs just fine).

18

This hardware should give you a relatively good performance, nothing stellar but adequate for most tasks and certainly for experimenting with Opensuse.

I’d bet that your problem is related to poor acpi implementation in the M/B. Sometimes a BIOS upgrade will fix it, but before that I’s try the install with the options palladium described above.

In my case, three or four years ago, after installation everything worked OK, there was no need to update the BIOS. I suppose the installed linux kernel and/or modules took care of the services that, during install, had to be provided by the (buggy) BIOS. Does this make sense?

19

Just to close the loop on this and respond to the last posting, yes, this does make sense.

I tried the noapic option and I can at least run the LiveCD to check it out. It runs pretty good. Apparently, no BIOS upgrade is needed. I think I will mess with this a bit and wait until 11.2 is available before attempting the actual install.

-Cheers