Odd installation problems...

[komega]

I've been trying, unsuccessfully to install Kubuntu for about 2 or 3 weeks now and would really appreciate some help. Here's my situation.

Athlon 64 3500+ (AMD 64) Processor
1 GB PC3200 DDR RAM
MSI RS480M2-IL Motherboard
250 GB IDE Hard Drive (split into 2 partitions, the Windows Partition and the System Recovery Partition)

I downloaded the AMD64 specific iso from the Kubuntu website and eventually made both a DVD and a CD without any errors on it (although it definitely took a while to get a CD without any errors.

All the errors that I've received I've gotten when attempting to do anything with either the CD or DVD. For simplicity's sake, I will henceforward refer to just the CD but actually meaning either one.

I have two CD-ROM drives, the primary one is a LightScribe drive (meaning it can etch images into the face of a CD) and a second "normal" drive. The CD doesn't work in the primary drive. Whenever I try to boot the LiveCD from there it brings up several errors. Booting the LiveCD from the second drive, however, presents no problem.

So, once I boot from the LiveCD I try to install. I'm attempting to install onto my 20 GB external USB hard drive. First I format it to be Linux ext 3 using PartitionMagic in Windows. Then, when I'm in Kubuntu off the LiveCD I go through all the steps (language, keyboard setup, information, and Timezone). When I get to choosing where to install Kubuntu I've tried telling it to erase the entire drive (as there's nothing on there) and I've tried making my own partitions. When I make my own partitions I've tried making various combinations:
/, 512 MB swap
/, 512 MB swap, 100 MB /Boot
/, 100 MB Boot

All eventually give the same errors.

I'm able to choose any of those options get to the next screen. The default for where to install GRUB is (hd0) but I believe that's my IDE hard drive and (hd1) is actually my external hard drive. I don't know for sure as using fdisk simply lists sdX, hd#.

Anyways, I successfully install and it tells me to restart. I do. When it gets to the point where it says to take the CD out and close the tray (if any), I do. Then I press enter but nothing happens. I can wait a while and still nothing will happen. Thus, I'm forced to just shut off my computer.

When I first try to boot from the external hard drive I get a GRUB error 15. Then, I'll change the BIOS settings so that the external hard drive is first in the hard drive priority list over the IDE drive. Then I'll get either an error 18 or an error 2 depending on if I set up a /Boot partition.

I'm not sure what's wrong. I don't even get a command screen for GRUB, it just takes me right to the error screen. Something must be weird since this is just the standard Kubuntu installer.

I would love some help as I really want to have a portable Kubuntu but I'm having a lot of difficulties with it.

Thanks.

[DaMoGan]

Re: Odd installation problems...


Maybe this will help: http://www.ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=80811

[Gezzer]

Re: Odd installation problems...

have you setup a free partition on the HDD
to install Kubuntu

if not please create a partition on the HDD for the install ...

[jankushka]

Re: Odd installation problems...

i've just had a colleague of mine install kubuntu edgy on an external usb drive.
he now uses it with his ibm laptop.
the process took 43 minutes and we had no issues whatsoever.
you have more fancy hw to deal with, so...i'd suggest to keep things simple...at least at the beginning.
i'd go about it by:
1) forgetting about grub
2) booting the livecd and installing on the external drive (keeping / and /boot together, for now)
3) rebooting and setting my box bios so that it look for (i.e. boot from) usb before the hd.
then, when the system boots ok from the external drive
4) worrying about grub

speaking of which...
here's the grub (all-in-one) manual: http://www.gnu.org/software/grub/manual/grub.html
as for the errors...
i'm pretty familiar with errors 2 and 15.
error 18 is new.
anyway, here's what the manual says:


error 2:
Bad file or directory type
This error is returned if a file requested is not a regular file, but something like a symbolic link, directory, or FIFO.


error 15:
File not found
This error is returned if the specified file name cannot be found, but everything else (like the disk/partition info) is OK.



error 18:
Selected cylinder exceeds maximum supported by BIOS
This error is returned when a read is attempted at a linear block address beyond the end of the BIOS translated area. This generally happens if your disk is larger than the BIOS can handle (512MB for (E)IDE disks on older machines or larger than 8GB in general).

[komega]

Re: Odd installation problems...

Unfortunately, I did all of that.

1) forgetting about grub
2) booting the livecd and installing on the external drive (keeping / and /boot together, for now)
3) rebooting and setting my box bios so that it look for (i.e. boot from) usb before the hd.
then, when the system boots ok from the external drive
4) worrying about grub

I install Kubuntu using the regular install on the desktop when booting from the LiveCD. As far as I know, there's no way to not install GRUB when doing that. The only thing I can think of would be to "install" GRUB to a hard drive that doesn't exist. Since GRUB is the last thing to install, Kubuntu would be on the external but not GRUB.

I've tried not having a /Boot and therefore just having a / and swap partitions but I got the same errors.

I always set it so that the external is higher than the internal hard drive in BIOS. That way it's the highest priority device that has something to boot off of (by that I mean that the floppy and CD-Rom drives are still higher priority, but there's nothing in them to boot so that doesn't really matter).

I don't know how I could get the system to boot without GRUB. I would be delighted if you could tell me because then maybe I could bypass all of these problems.

Is it possible that I shouldn't be using the AMD64 specific iso to create the LiveCD even though I have an Athlong 3500+ (an AMD 64-bit processor)?

I got error 18 only occassionally, I've found error 15 and 2 to be much more prevalent.

I tried doing everything again but instead of making the root partition be about 17 GB, I made it only 7. That way, the Linux partitions togethor were only about 7.75 GB. The rest I made a FAT32 partition.

That gave me an error 15.

I would greatly welcome more advice.

Thanks.