An attempt to summarise the situation so far: (I’m doing this from memory, which may not be quite right, at "work" rather than in front of the box in question.)
Basic system: AMD64 3200, Gigabyte GA-K8NS Pro Mobo, 1GB RAM, 2xHD (/dev/hda 120GB Maxtor PATA, /dev/sda 200GB Seagate SATA), ATi Radeon 9250 256MB video card, 17” flat screen monitor (1280x1024 @ 60Hz), Pioneer DVD-RW. The Maxtor is Master on IDE1, the DVD-RW Master on IDE2, the SATA drive on a separate SATA channel.
I have Kubuntu 5.10 Breezy installed on hda, which installed easily and has been stable and reliable.
I attempted to install Kubuntu 6.06 Dapper on sda. This seemed to go OK from the “alternate” text-based installer. Initially this would only display at 1024x768, so I modified /etc/X11/xorg.conf for higher resolution. (I made it look like the xorg.conf in the Breezy installation). This booted OK for a while, but after a few boots the Dapper system would hang showing a blank screen at the stage after “Loading Modules”, but before the login screen appears. The only way out of this I can find is to reset. I suspect there may be issues between Dapper and the ATi card, I've looked at other posts on this forum.
So now: Booting into either installed Breezy or installed Dapper (using GRUB) fails with what look like ATA/DMA error messages for sda. Boot either hangs (Dapper) or falls to an ash shell prompt (Breezy), which has limited functionality and doesn’t see sda. My suspicion is that repeated resets have corrupted the file system of sda. So, as I haven’t got anything on sda (except the basic Dapper install), I could either attempt to repair the existing filesystem, or reformat it. Except I can’t get to a prompt that would allow me to do this.
If I boot using the Dapper alternate CD and go through the Text-Based Install to get to the partitioner, it fails because it cannot recognise the CD-ROM. The drive is physically recognised at the start of boot-up, the installer starts and goes through the language selection screens, but then fails to find the CD-ROM (or rather, I think, the disc in the drive*). Result: hung, reset.
If I boot using the Breezy Install CD, it gets past the CD-ROM stage but hangs when starting the partitioner. Result: hung, reset.
If I boot using the Breezy Live CD it fails at the Recognise CD-ROM stage. Result: hung, reset.
If I boot using a Knoppix CD (ver 4.something) it boots OK after error messages about apm (Auto Power Management?). I can see hda2 and hda5 (the / and /home partitions) and my Breezy install and data are safe (it’s also backed up to another box) but can’t see sda, and no partitions of sda. So I can’t cfdisk /dev/sda to reformat it. Even shutting down Knoppix leads to a hung computer and another reset.
If I physically disconnect sda then GRUB hangs with Error 21 “Selected disk does not exist” presumably because it is looking for /dev/sda which is disconnected. Result: hung, reset.
So I’m in a hole, as far as I can see. I can’t even get to my Breezy installation on hda, though I know this is secure. If I could get to a prompt I could reformat sda and try again, using different video card drivers. (Or just give up, or try a different distro…) but for now I can’t get anywhere. Any suggestions that don’t involve a large hammer? From Knoppix, could I edit GRUB so that it isn’t looking for an OS on sda? – that assumes that GRUB is not on sda – then I hope I could boot into Breezy on hda and at least be back where I started. Where do the GRUB config files live in Kubuntu? I tried Find, which found quite a lot, but I don’t know what I’m looking for…
* I suspect this because attempts to load the live distros on the Linux Format mag cover DVD (PClinuxOS and CentOS) both fail with the message “Cannot find CD in drive, please insert” or something like that, again after the language selection screens.
Thanks for looking, any help gratefully accepted
Basic system: AMD64 3200, Gigabyte GA-K8NS Pro Mobo, 1GB RAM, 2xHD (/dev/hda 120GB Maxtor PATA, /dev/sda 200GB Seagate SATA), ATi Radeon 9250 256MB video card, 17” flat screen monitor (1280x1024 @ 60Hz), Pioneer DVD-RW. The Maxtor is Master on IDE1, the DVD-RW Master on IDE2, the SATA drive on a separate SATA channel.
I have Kubuntu 5.10 Breezy installed on hda, which installed easily and has been stable and reliable.
I attempted to install Kubuntu 6.06 Dapper on sda. This seemed to go OK from the “alternate” text-based installer. Initially this would only display at 1024x768, so I modified /etc/X11/xorg.conf for higher resolution. (I made it look like the xorg.conf in the Breezy installation). This booted OK for a while, but after a few boots the Dapper system would hang showing a blank screen at the stage after “Loading Modules”, but before the login screen appears. The only way out of this I can find is to reset. I suspect there may be issues between Dapper and the ATi card, I've looked at other posts on this forum.
So now: Booting into either installed Breezy or installed Dapper (using GRUB) fails with what look like ATA/DMA error messages for sda. Boot either hangs (Dapper) or falls to an ash shell prompt (Breezy), which has limited functionality and doesn’t see sda. My suspicion is that repeated resets have corrupted the file system of sda. So, as I haven’t got anything on sda (except the basic Dapper install), I could either attempt to repair the existing filesystem, or reformat it. Except I can’t get to a prompt that would allow me to do this.
If I boot using the Dapper alternate CD and go through the Text-Based Install to get to the partitioner, it fails because it cannot recognise the CD-ROM. The drive is physically recognised at the start of boot-up, the installer starts and goes through the language selection screens, but then fails to find the CD-ROM (or rather, I think, the disc in the drive*). Result: hung, reset.
If I boot using the Breezy Install CD, it gets past the CD-ROM stage but hangs when starting the partitioner. Result: hung, reset.
If I boot using the Breezy Live CD it fails at the Recognise CD-ROM stage. Result: hung, reset.
If I boot using a Knoppix CD (ver 4.something) it boots OK after error messages about apm (Auto Power Management?). I can see hda2 and hda5 (the / and /home partitions) and my Breezy install and data are safe (it’s also backed up to another box) but can’t see sda, and no partitions of sda. So I can’t cfdisk /dev/sda to reformat it. Even shutting down Knoppix leads to a hung computer and another reset.
If I physically disconnect sda then GRUB hangs with Error 21 “Selected disk does not exist” presumably because it is looking for /dev/sda which is disconnected. Result: hung, reset.
So I’m in a hole, as far as I can see. I can’t even get to my Breezy installation on hda, though I know this is secure. If I could get to a prompt I could reformat sda and try again, using different video card drivers. (Or just give up, or try a different distro…) but for now I can’t get anywhere. Any suggestions that don’t involve a large hammer? From Knoppix, could I edit GRUB so that it isn’t looking for an OS on sda? – that assumes that GRUB is not on sda – then I hope I could boot into Breezy on hda and at least be back where I started. Where do the GRUB config files live in Kubuntu? I tried Find, which found quite a lot, but I don’t know what I’m looking for…
* I suspect this because attempts to load the live distros on the Linux Format mag cover DVD (PClinuxOS and CentOS) both fail with the message “Cannot find CD in drive, please insert” or something like that, again after the language selection screens.
Thanks for looking, any help gratefully accepted
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