Live CD not loading properly

[gigabz666]

Hi guys. I'm enjoying Kubuntu on my laptop and recently I bought a new Alienware PC and decided to install Kubuntu on the second hard drive, but I seem to be running into some problems.

My system is:
AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 6000+
4GB RAM DDR2
alienware motherboard (Foxconn CS1XEM2AA)
2x NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GTX (in SLI)
ST350063 0AS SCSI Disk Device 500GB Hard Drive
NVIDIA STRIPE 465.77G RAID Hard Drive

Now, I put he CD (AMD-64 Desktop version) in the drive, restart the computer and the CD boots. I first tried to check the CD, so I select that, the kernel loads and then I just have a black screen. I then rebooted and tried to install instead and got the same problem. The next time I changed the boot settings so I had

boot: live noacpi nolacpi

I get the grey text on black background and found it hard to follow what was going on but in about a second it just stopped and the last three lines seemed to be the only errors.

VFS: Cannot open root device "<NULL>" or unknown-block (8,1)
Please append a correct "root=" boot option
Kernel panic - not syncing: VFS: Unable to mount root fs on unknown-block (8,1)

Means absolutely nothing to me and I tried to google the problem but could make sense of much of it. But most of the problems seemed to be more about Linux already being installed, but I've obviously not even got to that stage.

I noticed somewhere about trying an older kernel and luckily I had the 6.10 CD on hand. So I figured I would try that. Put that in instead and I was able to check the CD perfectly fine. Then when I tried the install, I got to a CLI. I had no idea what to do there, since when I used it on the laptop, I got to the GUI. But that seemed to work fine. Just wondered if you guys could help. Thanks.

[dibl]

Re: Live CD not loading properly

Sounds like you need to run it in "VGA" or "VESA" mode -- it is having trouble with your video card. For installation, you will want the "Alternate Install" CD, because it runs in character mode (text mode).

If you have a RAID disk array, that is likely going to present a problem for installation -- Linux does not do well with hardware RAID controllers. If your hard drives are just 2 separate hard drives, then no problem.

[gigabz666]

Re: Live CD not loading properly

Thanks for the very quick reply. I'll have to check up on some of the commands if I'm using the CLI. I get absolutely lost otherwise, lol.

The RAID thing has me pretty confused. Initially I thought that the drive with windows installed was the raid drive, and that the drive I have free was just the normal drive. I just double checked and I'm not sure now. The drive with nothing on states in Windows that it is 465GB in size, and the drive with all the Windows stuff on is 458GB. I believe they are two separate hard drives but I'm not sure. I guess this is the problem with buying a system and not building it myself. RAID is just a whole new world to me and I still don't understand many of the explanations I'm offered.

I'd like to make it work but it all feels a bit over my head now really.

[dibl]

Re: Live CD not loading properly

Probably your motherboard has a RAID controller chip on it (like mine does) and it puts up a message at every boot. That doesn't mean you have a RAID array established. If you didn't deliberately make a RAID array, then you have 2 separate hard drives on a motherboard that also happens to have a RAID controller.

Of more interest, are the hard drives IDE, SATA, or one of each?

[gigabz666]

Re: Live CD not loading properly

Yeah, that's right. You can press F10 I think to setup but I've not done that.

As for the drives, the 500GB I believe is SATA, and the RAID drive, I'm not sure. I feel stupid that I know so little about my own PC, lol. The order sheet I was given really doesn't give that much info.

Edit: Just checked the Alienware Website, they should both be SATA drives.

[dibl]

Re: Live CD not loading properly

When you first power on your computer, there is a brief message about entering "Setup" or "BIOS". Usually you have to press a function key, like F-2 or F10. You need to do this, at your next boot, so you can determine the following 2 things:

1. Drive types -- we gotta know whether both drives are SATA or not. There will be a "peripherals" or "drives" section in BIOS that will show their drive type.

2. Drive sequence -- we gotta know the order in which they are listed in the "Boot Sequence" in BIOS.

While you're there, make sure that the "Boot Sequence" lists the CD/DVD Drive first, before the hard drives.

Once we know these items, the adventure can begin. The first step is for you to download the ISO image and burn a GParted Live CD. Here is the link -- get the latest version which is 0.3.4-8: http://sourceforge.net/project/showf...kage_id=173828

Use whatever CD burner you have to "burn as ISO" and make sure you check the md5sum for the downloaded file, so there's no doubt that it is correct.

[gigabz666]

Re: Live CD not loading properly

Well I've just got back in from work. I did my best with the bios but I wasn't sure if I found the right stuff.

In the basic settings, there was IDE Channel 0, Master and Slave, both under which where the two DVD drives. The only other thing mentioned there was SATA Channel 1 Master ST3500630AS. That's a Seagate Barracuda 500GB SATA drive. No other drives are mentioned.

Other the next settings there was the boot order. All it stated was that

First Boot Device: CDROM
Second Boot Device: Hard Drive
Third Boot Device: Disabled
Boot Other Device: Enabled

A little further up were boot priorities for CDROM and Hard Drives.
Ignoring the CDROMs under Hard Drives, the priorities were:

SCSI-0 NVIDIA STRIPE 465.77GB
ST3500630AS

I then noticed elsewhere some Raid Settings, so I went in to check and it mentioned that RAID was enabled, SATA 0 Secondary Enabled, SATA 1 Primary Enabled.

So my guess is that both are SATA drives, the NVIDIA STRIPE booting first and the Seagate booting next, both after the DVD drives.

Just to note that under windows there are two separate hard drives. I do think that the first drive (C:/) holding all the Windows stuff, basically everything is the NVIDIA STRIPE, and I have a second hard drive (F:/) which is empty and I think that's the Seagate drive. E and F being the two DVD drives.

No idea if this helps at all sorry.

I have GParted downloaded, and I'm just about to burn it. the MD5Sum matches up. I also downloaded to Kubuntu CD's 64bit 7.04, one desktop, one alternate. Both are fine as well. I'm also currently downloading the same two CD's but 6.10 instead.

I think that's everything.


EDIT: I just thought I would add something here. I had a little secondary problem with an external hard drive and worried if it would be ok to have two partitions with two different filesystems on (I got it working fine and was straightforward). It meant using gparted and I figured whilst I was looking at the external drive, I had a quick look at the two internal drives. This is what turned up.

[quote]/dev/sda1 465.76GB Total, 17.4GB Used, NTFS
/dev/sdb1 232.88GB Total, Unallocated
/dev/sdc1 232.88GB Total, Unallocated[\quote]

So sda1 is my F:/ which was originally empty but I copied the contents of my external drive onto it as a backup as I reconfigured the external drive. My guess is that the two unallocated drives are infact the RAID drive, which has Windows on it. There was nothing else there, the fourth entry was the external hard drive. Just thought I would add that as a bit of extra info.

[copycat]

Re: Live CD not loading properly

A STRIPE RAID-0 means both of your drives now show as one drive.

Level 0 -- Striped Disk Array without Fault Tolerance: Provides data striping (spreading out blocks of each file across multiple disk drives) but no redundancy. This improves performance but does not deliver fault tolerance. If one drive fails then all data in the array is lost.

My two 120GB's were RAID0-striped when I bought mine but I knew quite some bit about the insides of a pc so they were soon un-RAID-ed.
the /dev's should be partitions, but unless yours works different than mine, that states there are 3 SATA-drives.

[dibl]

Re: Live CD not loading properly

unless yours works different than mine, that states there are 3 SATA-drives.

Yep, that's what it looks like to me, too.

@gigabz666, I think it's time to "get in touch with your feelings".

What do you want out of this adventure? I assume the RAID 0 array is the twin 232.88GB drives, but they are not used for anything yet. The big 465GB drive is all Windows/NTFS. To use either of the 232GB drives for Kubuntu, you'll have to un-RAID them. To use the 465GB drive for Linux, you'll have to partition it into at least 2, and preferably 3 more partitions, depending on which version of Windows is on it. How you approach this kinda depends on what you want out of it. If you're not attached to that RAID array, then the simplest approach would be to un-raid those two drives, partition one of them into 3 partitions, and install Kubuntu on it, and let the grub menu go to the Windows drive, so you'll have a dual boot system. But I don't know if that's what you're after or not. If so, your 3 partitions on the 232 GB drive would be:

6GB -- for the "/" partition
0.5GB -- for the "swap" partition
the_rest_of_it -- for the "/home" partition (where your data will go).

I hope that gives you some choices and ideas ...

[copycat]

Re: Live CD not loading properly

and let the grub menu go to the Windows drive, so you'll have a dual boot system.

Why don't you want grub to go to the MBR?

[gigabz666]

Re: Live CD not loading properly

Well I wanted to just use one drive for Linux and the other for Windows. By my reckoning, the two sata drives in Raid are holding Windows. The 465GB was the F:/ which was basically empty. When I'm in Windows, the C:/ has 83.2GB free out of 458GB. So I'm using a lot of it with videos and music. So I think Windows is on the two SATA drives in RAID and the third SATA drive is empty. So I should just install Linux on that right. That's my thinking anyway.

[dibl]

Re: Live CD not loading properly

Hmmmmmm.

@copycat, I was originally thinking the MBR is on the NTFS-formatted drive, that presumably being Windows. However,

@gigabz666, you may well be right. GParted shows "unallocated" for the twin 232's, but that may be because they are hiding behind the hardware RAID controller. So they may in fact be the Windows drives, formatted NTFS. Of course, Linux will never find the MBR if that is the case ....

Sooooooo, if that is true, then YES you can easily partition and format that third drive and install Kubuntu there. But, where to put Grub? I do not know what it will do when it goes looking for the MBR, under this configuration.

Do you like to do experiments on your PC? Is your data all backed up? I can't guarantee the outcome of this one -- I'm sure you can install Kubuntu, but I'm not sure what you'll get for a boot menu, if indeed you get one at all.

[gigabz666]

Re: Live CD not loading properly

Well now I've sorted the external hard drive problem I'll be running a backup today when I'm at work.

I'm just not sure what to do really lol. I guess I just don't like the idea of everything kind of blowing up, lol. I suppose if it does all go wrong I could unraid it thos twin drives and then basically use three hard drives. I'll have to give it a think, and I'll probably have to leave it for the weekend.

The first problem though is actually getting the CD to work. If I try and use 7.04 I'm going to have that problem I originally had, unless there is a work around. Either that or use 6.10.

[Qqmike]

Re: Live CD not loading properly

Officially, I’m not here. I avoid any RAID-GRUB posts. lol. Agree with Copycat – kill the RAID. Keep life simple. The experts at the hardwareguys site, including the host who is author of several leading hardware books, claim that most normal, regular folks (you & I) don’t need RAID, there’s no real advantages, there’s other ways to ensure peace of mind and backup integrity. RAID only protects you against one (not both) of the drives failing and offers no other backup or security advantages (like you should always also have parallel backups and keep one off-site, not where you live, and on and on and on.) Kill the RAID. dibl has it right – GRUB sees your drives as does BIOS, and who knows what BIOS sees behind any HDD controller setup. Now, I’m gone and would like to be an observer.

[gigabz666]

Re: Live CD not loading properly

If I kill the RAID then that means I'm going to have to reinstall Vista, right? I suppose if it has to be done, then I'll do it, but it's kind of a pain in the behind, lol.