Topic: Installation Problems.

[AJ Ploeg]

Here is my problem....

I have built 3 different machines from the bottom up all with one purpose in mind...to be an E-smith server.

Machine #1 was a Pentium 100 with 32 meg of ram, ATI 2 meg PCI video, 3com 3c905 PCI 10/100. Sony 2X cd rom, NEC 2.0 gb HD.

Machine #2 was Pentium 133 with new ram, same ATI, swapped 3com, same cd rom, and same HD

Machine #3 is a Pentium 166-MMX with again new ram, yet another 3c905, 12x CD-rom, and a WD 2.5 gig HD.

Each of these machines had a different motherboard each time.

I have tried to install 4.1.1, 4.1.2, and 5 on these machines.  The software refuses to install.  4.1.1 is an original CD that was mailed to me from E-smith.  4.1.2, and 5 I downloaded the ISO and created with EZ-CD creator while following the instructions in the documentation.  My efforts are mostly concentrating on machine #3 right now.  I have swapped all possible hardware out of it, tried 3 different 3com cards, as well as a Dlink 10 Mbps, and a Boca ISA.  With version 4.1.1 and 4.1.2, the installation will crap out about 40 - 50 % of module installations, if it even gets that far.  I get a kernal panic at this point and memory dump.

Version 5 now just gets to the blue Welcome screen, and then about 1 minute later, gets a signal 11, unmounts everything, and tells me to shut down.

I'm just about ready to toss these CDs out the window and switch back to NT.  Please help.....

[Kees]

Hi,
I've managed boxes as low as 75Mhz, but being linux, they want memory.
You don't say how much you use. I've always got mine running with at least 64 Meg. See if you can build one with as much mem as possible and try again..

For the rest, I can only say that I've been building boxes that match you specs, but I've never had the problem that I could not get at least one combination of motherboard/mem/network card going, so keep trying a bit longer.

good luck.

kees

[Ryan Sutton]

I have a SME on a cyrix 200, 5 gig drive.  Originally I was using 72pin EDO memory.  EDO has to be used in pairs, my pairs where not the same....1 pair was 16 meg x2, the other pair was 8meg x2 for a total of 48meg.  My system would halt and dump memory during a large smb file transfer.  I took it down to 32megs using on the first pair of EDO and same halt/error occurs.  Installing a single 64meg 100mhz SDRAM stick fixed the problem, so I am guessing that linux needs high performance memory.  The 72 pin stuff is not bad memory, it was taken from several windows boxes that ran for many years w/out problems.  Good Luck.

[Enigma]

Just for my 2 cents worth - i have built  low spec e-smiths as well - and one of the problems i had was similar to the original post in that it failed at or about 50%, the solution to my prob was to cut the cd at single speed and ensure i had *good* memory..... i have had to turn of bios shadowing before now as well.

My guess is its more to do with the quality of the components than it is the distro.

For the intersted i currently run an Elonex P90, 48 meg ram, 1gb hdd and 3com + Dlink NIC's

Keep trying and you will sort it

Enigma