As a few other people were sharing their success with installation I am
too. I started with RedHat 5.1. There are several things you should
avoid. PCMCIA support in 5.1 is still 2.9.x I think. Either that or
3.0.0. Either case it doesn't have the 3com card that comes from Dell.
In fact, I would say keep everything you don't need off. See if it
installs. Also, some disks have problems installing LILO in the MBR.
What you need to do is install LILO on the linux partition and then set
that to active. You can do that with fdisk(unix, not dos) or partition
magic. That will have an option to boot with your hda1, which will be
windows 95. A little known fact about RedHat installation(possibly
slackware, I've never tried) is that you have virtual consoles active and
tty3/tty4 both have more detailed information about what's going on. If
you come to the lock, you should still be able to switch consoles and
check what it's choking on. If it's a package, just don't install it and
do it later with an rpm/deb/tgz whatever. tty2 has an open prompt.
Redhat is a bootable CD. The inspiron prompts at boot if you push
anything so push a key at boot, before it starts running windows code and
it will bring up a screen on which device to boot from. Anyway, install
just the base and see if that works. You still have windows95 on the
computer, so you could make a few placeholder partitions and then one
that's 600 megs and copy all the files from the install cd over. Keep in
mind that you will be using that partition so you can't write over it
during the install.
On Thu, 5 Nov 1998, Ned Bedinger wrote:
> When I bought my 3200 several months ago I immediately wiped it clean and
> tried to install Red Hat 5.0. The install failed, so I bought an
> InfoMagic CD and tried Slackware, and it also failed. Recently I took a
> shot at installing Red Hat 5.1, again to no avail.
>
> In each case thre problem was this: installation would begin normally, but
> several megs into the process it would pause and eventually just die. I
> think this is the only symptom of the failure.
>
> I had these results when I wiped the 6 gig hard drive and then created
> parttions. There should have been no problem with space, I don't think.
> Can anyone speculate on why it dies like that?
>
> The first two gigs of the hard disk are now occupied by Win '95 stuff. I'd
> like to preserve it for a while if possible, is it conceivable that Linux
> can boot from a partition beyond the first two gigs? I tried it last week,
> and the installation died (again) so I don't knoiw fer sure if the bios
> will or will not allow booting that far into the drive.
>
> Thanks in advance!
>
> [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
> Edward Bedinger
> Technical Communications
> Edword Co.
> 206.782-0378
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------
> If this were merely my opinion, I'd probably keep it to myself.
> My employer is, nonetheless, not responsible for my expressions.
>
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