[TAG] Hangs, crashes and failures with Fedora Core 2's installer

[Bradley Chapman]

Ben,

On Wed, 14 Jul 2004 12:03:36 -0400, Ben Okopnik <ben at callahans.org> wrote:
> On Wed, Jul 14, 2004 at 04:09:41PM +0100, Bradley Chapman wrote:
> > Mr. Ben,
> 
> (Folks, he's at it again. Somebody go get the wet noodle, or whatever it
> is we're using to beat people with these days.)

*runs*

> 
> > On Wed, 14 Jul 2004 09:49:13 -0400, Ben Okopnik <ben at callahans.org> wrote:
> > >
> > > Can't say that I'm an expert on Fedora, but it sounds like it's hanging
> > > when you get to the part where you're doing heavy disk I/O. I'd take a
> > > careful look at the BIOS - "LBA" settings have been known to cause this
> > > sort of problems in the past.
> >
> > I thought much the same thing, only the part which confuses me is why
> > the 2.6.5 custom kernel
> > used with the FC2 installer (and for that matter, the 2.4.22 custom
> > kernel with FC1's installer) hangs during heavy disk I/O, while the
> > vanilla 2.6.7 kernel I originally had installed into my RH9
> > installation didn't burp in the slightest.
> 
> How about solving one problem at a time, Brad? If you're really
> concerned with the above "why", then you could join the
> kernel-developers list, learn C _really really_ well, dig into the
> diffs, run a bunch of properly-designed experiments, and report the
> results. I suspect you're actually not that interested - and my guess is
> that no one else is either. Isn't the point here to get the system
> _working?_ Given how often new kernels/patches are available, this
> particular "why" isn't really a worthwhile question, IMO.

I fully intend on solving one problem at a time, namely the problem of
being incapable of
installing FC2 without it hanging. The "why" doesn't really concern
me, unless it turns out to
be the custom patches that the Red Hat engineers and the Fedora devs
have applied to their
respective kernels.

> 
> > Anyway, my laptop BIOS is a Phoenix BIOS - any pointers on what I
> > could try to look for and modify? It talks about things like "Large
> > Disk Access Mode" and says that some UNIX systems need that modified,
> > but I don't want to mess my XP installation yp (since it's my only
> > remaining OS on this machine).
> 
> I'm missing your point WRT your "only remaining OS". What, once you lose
> it, you'll never get it back? If you've been backing up your data, then
> even if something does happen (which I doubt), you'll be fine.

My problem is that while I do have backups, I don't want to have to
trash the entire disk and
wipe it clean to make the FC2 installer kernel happy. I'm just aiming
to minimize the amount
of disruption (which has already reached a pretty enormous level).

> 
> Long Block Addressing is a method the HD controllers used to use in
> order to access data in partitions greater than 504MB; Linux, Novell,
> etc. are all smart enough to do their own geometry translation, and
> don't need the extra help.

I was aware of that; so far, LBA hasn't caused any problems with my system.

> 
> AFAIK, Wind0ws shouldn't have a problem - but that's not a guarantee.
> Micr0s0ft's KnowledgeBase says nothing about reformatting when switching
> - but that's no guarantee of anything either. The only thing I can tell
> you is that I've done this, oh, probably half a dozen times in the last
> 5 or 6 years, and haven't seen a problem.

That's good to know.

So your best suggestion then is to tweak my laptop's BIOS and try again?

Brad