[newbie] How do you post to this list??

[Gregg Carrier]

Does anyone see this message? I am having a hell of a time posting to this list and would normally not run a test posting. Sorry if this is the one that actually makes it out there. Of course, if it is, here's my very annoying installation problem:   Here is my basic situation. I have a Pentium 2 266. Fresh new 20G hard drive that I want to install Linux to. In order to ascertain that the drive works, I created two DOS partitions on it and then removed them. Disk seems to work just fine.   I went throught the basic installation for Mandrake. I set 3 partitions. First swap of 120meg. / of 4gig. /home of 500meg. I accepted the default packages to install and selected to format all of my new Linux partitions. The next screen says the system is creating the filesystem on hdb5. A cursor sits there and flashes, but after some initial activity, there is no noise from the hard drive. This goes on as long as I allow it to, just sitting there. Eventually, I ctrl-alt-deleted out, as there was no response to other keyboard input.   Does this sound familiar to anyone? What could possibly cause such a hang? I'm feeling pretty helpless, and the only thing the mandrake support guy said was "wait longer"...uh I've waited up to 30 minutes and nothing is happening in there... Hope the readers here know more than the support guys. Thanks in advance for any ideas.   Gregg