Installing mandrake 9.2

[viper_soft 0]

hey everyone.. i just downloaded mandrake about 2 days ago.. and i'm having problems installing it.. the cd won't boot and when i made a floppy boot it says please insert linux mandrake installation cd, when it's in the cd rom. i'm not using a LG rom so i shouldn't have any problems.. i just wanna know. is there any special way of burning it to a cd is there a special name that i have to call it.. any help would be great thanks

 

 

viper..

[Dapper Dan 0]

It's not to late to switch to Red Hat 9..

 

Seriously, if you burned the iso to disk without errors, and your bios is set to boot from cdrom, everything should work swimmingly.

 

Did you check the downloaded iso size with md5sum to make sure it matched?

When you explore the contents of the cd's are you seeing files and folders or a single iso image?

If all this checks out ok, then my next guess is you somehow got a bad file from the server. Saw this happen just yesterday at LinuxQustions.org.

[Vermyn 0]

Better yet... it's not too late to install Gentoo. Very much worth the pain of the install

[danleff 0]

Excuse me if you know all this already, but these are common mistakes.

 

Make sure that the CD is burned using the option "burn image." If you are using Nero, Go to the file menu and choose burn image. Burn the image at 4X or 8X, no higher. When you view the CD, it should have a bunch of files listed, not just one file with the .iso extension.

 

Then, make sure that the bios is set to CDROM as the first boot device.

 

Check the MD5SUM to make sure that you have a good download.

[viper_soft 0]

do you think linux red hat 9.0 would be better/?? what's the differents.. because all i know is windows xp.. lol.. but i wanna make the change.. and what cd's should i download..?? thanks for the help..

[Dapper Dan 0]

Everyone here is going to have a different take on the distros, and some will say their choice is the best, but it really comes down to personal preference. The hard part is, as a new person to Linux, you have to start somewhere. I use RH 9 because you can install apt-get rpm which makes downloading and installing packages very simple. That way, I can do other productive things rather than chasing down dependencies and obsure rpm packages to make things work. Look for the ISOs here. Pick a mirror closest to you.

 

Another route you may want to consider is looking at the cd based distros, a Linux distro that runs entirely from cd. Download the iso, create the cd, set your bios to boot from cdrom and boot it. This way you can check out Linux first before actually installing it to your hard drive, and it will have no effect on your existing XP installation. My personal favorite is Morphix-Gnome 4.1, but here is a good list of others, Knoppix being the most popular..

[Neus 0]

Quote:

Excuse me if you know all this already, but these are common mistakes.
Make sure that the CD is burned using the option "burn image."

Yeh thats true, I did it myself... lol.. I didn't relize I had to burn it a special way... anyways, a good way to see if you burned it correct is to see:
a: open up the cd and see what files are in it... if all you see is the iso, you did it wrong
b: also some burners are extream PAINS and rename the files if they are over so many characters long... to check this, you will see the cd and the correct icon, autostart it, and if you see stuff like
LABEL 11
LABEL (other numbers)
thats a good clue that it renamed the files on you, so you should download nero burner and then burn it with nero.. its the best for it being a short free time that you need.

heres a nice faq by LinuxISO.com that I learned from
http://www.linuxiso.org/viewdoc.php/howtoburn.html

[Dapper Dan 0]

Hmm, Neus! Sounds like you're coming along nicely with Linux!

[viper_soft 0]

guess what i got it too work.. the problem now is every time i start linux it's in a console mode.. where's the GUI? is there a command to start it up.. or have i installed incorrectly..

 

btw the first problem was the way i burnt it.. usually i dont make mistakes like that.. i extracted the contents using winrar then burnt the files.. big mistake.. the cd still didn't boot but i just used the floppy to boot..

[Neus 0]

ok, i ran into the same problem with the gui, you see, while installing you probably forgot to choose to auto load in kde or whichever gui you picked, simply type in

kde

or

start x

in the command line (i think this should work... dunno... some1 suggested that to me, but not till it was too late and i had already just reinstalled it and making sure to pick right options

[Dapper Dan 0]

Neus, is on the right track. Actually though, it's:

 

startx [enter]

 

Or if you aren't getting the login manager, you could as root type:

 

kdm [enter]

 

And that should bring up the login manager.

 

This problem you're having seems to be happening to a lot of folks who are trying to install Mdk 9.2. It happened to me too.

[Neus 0]

yeh i think that maybe theres a mess up when it asks if you want to auto start in the gui, maybe if you selct you do, it doesnt do it... dunno.. but when i tried agian it seemed to work... ;( oh well...

[Maillion 0]

I've been reading a LOT of linux forums over the past few days, and it seems that a bunch of people have been having trouble with Mandrake 9.1 and 9.2, including me. I had so much trouble with 9.1 that I opted to go back to 9.0, which works fine on my system. The only problem that I had with it was that the installation would hang about halfway through the first CD. It had an option on the install window that said "Details", so I decided to click on that to see if I could find out what was hanging it up. This time the install went through without a hitch. Go figure. Anyway, you might try 9.0, then upgrade... BTW, as long as the kernel versions are the same, the 'Linux' part of one distro is the same as any other. The differences come in what programs and extras are included, the way of adding software, and of course the install method.

 

Johnny

[danleff 0]

Of course, you could install Mandrake cooker, as I just did, which has kernel 2.6.0 and KDE 3.2 built in.

 

I'm usng it as we write.

[Dapper Dan 0]

LOL! danleff, you're a braver soul than I am! I'd be scared to death of Mandrake Cooker! Heck I'm scared to death of Fedora! It's gonna be a while before I upgrade to kernel 2.6 too!

Maillion you're right about Mdk 9.1 and 9.2 giving trouble to a lot of new users. I used 9.0 for over a year and loved it. It's still a great version of Mandrake and I run it on two computers at work. I think 9.0 is the best Mdk for any new Linux user. 9.1 and 9.2 really disappointed me. I felt that both were a step down from 9.0.

[danleff 0]

I have to agree. Now that I think about it Mandrake 9.0, if I remember correctly, nicely set up mount points for all my distros and Win partitions. The most recent versions, including cooker, would not. Although cooker detected my NTFS and fat32 Win XP partitions and set up mount points for them.

 

The Mandrake cooker CD's also failed to upgrade my prior instalation of Mandrake 9.1 and I had to do a fresh install. It also failed to create a boot disk with lilo X3. I'm writing an article on it for my webpage and to use as a reference.

 

Fedora looks and feels good and has been stable as a rock. Package installation has been a breeze. Of course, once you have a system setup the way that you want, it is hard to move on.