Topic: Installation woes

[Andrew Roberts]

I'm setting up two servers (for different locations).  Specs are as follows:

CUSL2 mobo
PIII 1.0 GHz
512 MB RAM
2x20GB Maxtor DiamondMax Drives on the first IDE channel (primary master & primary slave)
CD-ROM & Segate tape drive on the 2nd IDE channel.
2x3906B NICs

I'm setting up these boxes as server/gateways, with RAID 1 (I know about the performance hit by having both HDDs on one Channel).  Everything installed fine on the first box, and e-smith is running happily.  However, the second box (identical to the first one, AFAIK) is giving me nothing but grief during the install process.

Problem #1
When I try to install for RAID 1, I get the error
"An error occured transferring the install image to your hard drive.  You are probably out of disk space."

Problem #2
The installation seems to run into problems when the screen shows "Transferring install image to hard drive...."  The progression bar runs to about 1/3 complete, and then stalls.  The HDD appears to be running, and the CD busy light comes on intermittently.  I let the thing run for a good half hour before shutting things down.

I'm guessing that this is a hardware related problem.  I did check the drives with the Maxtor "enermax" tool and they tested clean.  I even installed Windows98se without a hitch.

Any hints or advice about how to track down the problem would be greatly appreciated!!

Cheers,

Andrew

[Andrew Roberts]

I hate replying to my own thread, but I did manage to solve my problem.  After repeated attempts at installing, I finally received a "signal 11" error.  After searching through the phorums, I figured out that this error meant that there was either a problem with the CD (e.g. corrupted files) or there was a problem with a device.

This is what I did:

1.  Verified the CD burn with the MD5SUM program.  (Checked ok).
2.  Ran a disk utility on hda (Checked ok).
3.  Ran a disk utility on hdb (Checked ok)
4.  I removed the CD-ROM and installed a backup drive (an old 4x drive) -- EUREKA!

It seems that there is a problem with either the original CD-ROM, or the way it reads my burned CD.  Perhaps the disc had a fingerprint on it or something... *shrug*

Curious that the drive in question had no problems reading Win98 install discs or other software install discs.  BTW, the drive I had problems with is a Creative 52x.

Cheers,

Andrew

[ed sharpe archivist for]

you mention that the win. cd seemed to always work ok.... ok my 2 cents worth

I have noticed that sometimes  cd's I burn myself on either my hp or sony burner seem to be a litte harder to read on  some systems than say the  windows me cd. why? I dunno... perhaps  the big boys burn  deeper and harder than what we buy  for our systems? But I have noted there does seem to be sometimes  a diff...


ed sharpe archivist for smecc


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