I have a small fixed ip network at home, running red hat 9 on two
amd k6 500 Mhz boxes. One has 256 M memory and the other 320 M. They
pretty much meet my needs, but lately I have detected that the internet
sites
I frequent are requiring some more modern software than I can run. I
attempted to install
Fedora 8, but that failed on the AMD processors. So I ordered a set of
CentOS 5.3 i386 disks.
The CentOS install fails also. I could get the first screen up,
offering choices of how to boot, and if I asked for memtest86 that
would start. (I had verified memory earlier, during my F8 attempts).
However, any other choice resulted in a reboot (generally during loading
of vmlinux). Sometimes the disk wouldn't be recognized as bootable.
I have convinced myself that the disks are OK (see below) and that I
must need either better hardware or more memory (but this is the i386
version of CentOS 5.3) or some parameter on the install that I haven't
tried (and I've tried about all I have found or remember). I would
appreciate any help.
What I've done so far:
At first I thought that the CentOS 1of6 disk must be bad (couldn't even
run a mediacheck) and emailed the vendor. Then it occurred to me that I
could perhaps download and burn disk 1of6 and use that to get the
install started. (Up until my attempts at F8 I had not had the
capability to burn a CD. While trying with F8 I bought a used "intel
inside" computer with a broken XP system on it. I blew that away but F8
found problems with the hard disk and wouldn't install. I managed to
install RedHat 9, which gave me access to the CD). I reaized that the
process would be a bit "iffy" on a box with hard-disk problems, and also
I had never burned a cd, but googled around for instructions and plunged
in. I downloaded an ios, checked it with md5sum and it was OK. I
copied it to the "new" computer via NFS and checked it again: OK. I
burned a CD using cdrecord, and the burn appeared to work. The result
behaved much like the original had. I tried two
more times, varying stuff that I thought might affect the burn, and
always got the same sort of behavior. Finally I tried mounting (on a
RH9 box) each of the four disks 1of6 I now had and copied (from
/dev/cdrom rather than /mnt/cdrom, so as to avoid separating out the
files) each to a separate directory and compared them. All three that I
burned were identical. The "store bought" disk was a little larger, but
compared OK up to EOF on the other (and I recall reading that
mass-produced disks might be different in their padding). So I am
convinced now that there is nothing wrong with either the original or
recently burned disks 1of6
and the problem must either be requiring better/more hardware (but this
is the i386 version of cent OS) or some parameter on the install I have
never heard of.
Again, any advice would be appreciated.
Buz
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