Fedora 2 on old Inspiron 3200

Aadain2001 · #1 19th May 2004, 05:16 AM

Ok, so I'm trying to install FC2 on my old Inspiron 3200 laptop which has been running FC1 up till now. When I instert the first CD in the drive and bootup, it seems to be going find until it tries to run /sbin/loader. The CD spins and spins and spins, and nothing happens. This also happened with FC2test3 a few weeks back, but I thought that was just a problem with it being a test release. Any idea what's going on and how to fix it?

jrstueve · #2 21st May 2004, 04:16 PM

I'm experiencing the same problem. Old Dell Lattitude CPi.

I've found that if I manually eject the CD then it moves to the next menu, I fill those out and then it stalls again.

Tried noprobe - same results
Tried nofb - same results

Tried the ctrl-alt-Fx buttons, no other consoles.

HEP!

jrstueve · #3 21st May 2004, 07:19 PM

I finally found what I think is the error... it was pausing trying to mount the cd-rom (? - what did it boot from?) and hung waiting for that...

what I think did the trick, was to pull the cd-rom out (no advisable) and plug it back in... then it went to the next section of the script...

still trying...

alt-f2 and alt-f3 helped.

Aadain2001 · #4 22nd May 2004, 09:35 PM

I finally figured out what was wrong. Apparently there is a problem with accessing the CD-ROM with the new 2.6 kernel (don't ask me why). After booting from the install CD I removed the CD from the drive. The install script then asked me where I want to install from and I chose to do an NFS installation from my main system, but you could always try a FTP or HTTP install. Got FC2 installed and the CD-ROM still won't mount. BTW, check out the wireless PCMCIA thread for how to get the PCMCIA subsystem working.

Is it just me or does FC2 feel a little... unfinished?

jrstueve · #5 22nd May 2004, 10:03 PM

I did the same thing, and the system worked great getting the packages from my local ftp server.

The install bombed out near the end on some packages, and so I finally threw up my hands and installed the minimal package, and will build the rest using yum or apt.

I think the problem is this laptop is on its last legs.... for one. Or the mounting of the CD-ROM is problematic. It was failing on some DMA error continuously until the CD is removed.