Today Frode Petersen did spake thusly:
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?
I think there's a bug with EIDE on some mobos with NV SATA - I'm seeing
exactly the same behaviour on a K8N-DL (NForce 4 pro chipset)
--
Scott van Looy - email:me@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx | web:www.ethosuk.org.uk
site:www.freakcity.net - the in place for outcasts since 2003
PGP Fingerprint: 7180 5543 C6C4 747B 7E74 802C 7CF9 E526 44D9 D4A7
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Some men are born mediocre, some men achieve mediocrity, and some men
have mediocrity thrust upon them.
-- Joseph Heller, "Catch-22"
