Hello again.
I asked about this a while back, but thought a bad burn was to blame.
Now I'm not so shure and need help in finding a solution to this strange
problem.
First, the relevant hardware:
Asus A8N-SLI Premium mb (socket939, nForce4 SLI), 2GB ram, 2 sata HD
sda/sdb, NEC nd-3550a IDE DVD burner (IDE master, ch1)
I have downloaded FC-6-x86_64-boot.iso (CD image for internet install)
and FC-6-x86_64-DVD.iso (DVD image for normal install), and burnt them
on corresponding media using Brasero. I have also tried GnomeBaker on
the DVD.
The procedure:
1. Boot from the CD or the DVD. Results are identical for both.
2. Type "linux askmethod" or "linux rescue". (Same result)
2. Choose language, keyboard and install type 'Local CD-ROM'
3. The DVD-player ejects the disk and FC install complains:
"The Fedora Core CD was not found in any of
your CDROM drives. Please insert the Fedora
Core CD and press OK to retry."
There is a way around this if there is an image file on an accessible
partition:
4. Go back one step, choose install from local harddisk, enter directory
where the image file is, press OK.
From here the install/rescue works as normal, so the image files
themselves are OK.
I have compared the checksums of each file in the FC-6-x86_64-boot.iso
to the ones on the CD, like this:
mount -t iso9660 <path>FC-6-x86_64-boot.iso /media/test/ -o loop
md5sum {Fedora\ Core,test}/*
md5sum {Fedora\ Core,test}/isolinux/*
The checksums are identical, so the files themselves are OK. I have no
reason to think that the result would be different for the dvd, but I
haven't checked. The failure is identical, and if I'm correct, the files
common in both isos are the ones that would be needed to get past that
point.
I have also tried watching a DVD movie, and that worked. (Mplayer
worked, Totem didn't)
Possible causes: (?) (In random order)
- Timeout of media mount during install to short. This would indicate a
drive on the brink of collapse. Is there a way to increase such a
timeout just to check?
- I have seen someone mentioning that the bios is used for the initial
mount (pre entering 'linux' to start install) and that linux later uses
it's own driver to mount later. Does this change occur at the point in
the procedure where it fails? If so, how do I diagnose whether this is a
driver failure?
- Burning the isos resulted in some kind of error in the media metadata
(for lack of a better term). Maybe some bit or byte or label unrelated
to the files should be set to a certain value, and it wasn't?
I have googled and googled, without coming closer to a solution. I have
cleaned the drive's lens. I have seen reports of the exact same failure,
but in intel based systems. (AFAIK the solutions were intel specific)
I tried the option 'all-generic-ide' when booting, but I might have made
an error in doing so: What is the correct way of specifying such a boot
option? (IIRC I wrote: linux all-generic-ide rescue) Isn't that option
intel specific?
At this point, all I can say is
Help....
Frode
