This Ubuntu install is TRYING to make me angry …
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…and it’s doing a WONDERFUL job of it!
I have tried to install Ubuntu Linux as part of a dual-boot on my desktop computer no less than SEVEN times. Here is the tutorial I am using as a guide.
All I can get it to do is sit and wave that blinding neon orange (YUK) bar back and forth for about a year then put up what looks like a command prompt that says “initramfs” in the prompt.
I checked with a search engine and found out how to get the system to give me a little information about what it is (or isn’t, as the case may be) doing. It’s hanging up while “waiting for the root file system”.
So, if I understand that correctly, after I’ve been fighting with this for a damn week, after I’ve rearranged my whole partition table (and LOST a bunch of data in the process) to make room form this OS, after it’s successfully written the operating system files to my hard disk not once, but SEVEN times, NOW this stupid thing is going to tell me it cannot read my hard disk?
For the record, Yes, my system is a little on the old side. The system doesn’t exactly have a brand name. I built it out of pieces and parts, most of which came to this end of the internet via eBay. I like to refer to it as “Frankenstein”. The motherboard is from Gigabyte Motherboards, but they discontinued it in 2003 or so, I think. The hard drive is an 80gigabyte IDE drive.
I saw one discussion that said the only way to fix the problem is to get into the system’s BIOS settings and set the hard drive type to “RAID” instead of IDE. I hope that’s not the only solution, because my BIOS doesn’t HAVE a setting for RAID drives!
Then there was another discussion where a guy mentioned that his hard drive was identified as /hda1 until he upgraded his kernel and something switched it to /hde1.
I need to either find someone who can tell me what the problem is, or I need to find a different build of Linux to install or, if all else fails, I could just stick with Windows and continue to make Microsoft wealthy.
Technorati Tags: ubuntu, linux, windows+xp, dual+boot, initramfs, waiting+for+root+file+system, gripes, rant,
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While it’s booting, you can pres control + alt + f1 to see more information (so you don’t just see the bouncing orange bar)
On my system, it gets stuck unless I add the kernel option acpi=force
google your motherboard model name + linux, you might find some people with the same board who already figured it out. You can also see what errors or strange messages you get in the boot (after pressing ^!f1). this usually look like
starting network manager [OK]
if it workd
Did you burn a cd or get it from canonical? I had some problems with installation, but they subsided after burning a new disk.
I can´t help you much there I´m afraid.. I never have much success when it comes to software installations. I couldn´t even update my anti-virus software last night.. ridiculous. I had a look on the net and there are a few forums about that could probably help you out. Have you tried typing “Ubuntu installation problems” into Google? Hope you get it sorted.
Monika
I’ve used Ubuntu with good results. Like you, I didn’t care for the orange colors. I did notice there are some issues with the system resolution not going higher than 800X600. It can be corrected by downloading one of several helper apps thru the package manager. They all work so take your pick of which one you want to use. When making config changes, make sure you have write access to the proper directories where the config files reside or the settings won’t keep.
There are a couple of other flavors you might look at as well. Given the age of your computer, you might consider Xubuntu. It is based on the “X-Window” system and is written with a lightweight software footprint in mind. I installed Xubuntu on an AMD processor machine running at 400 MHz with a motherboard whose BIOS date is somewhere around the year 2000 and it worked wonderfully. It will utter a few words similar to one of the other posts saying your “ACPI fails to make the cutoff date” and to “try ACPI-FORCE” to make it work. I just looked at the words and thought “Hmm…” and went on. It installed and runs beautifully. I am running with 128 megs of RAM though it says Xubuntu will run on as little as 32.
If you don’t like Ubuntu or Xubuntu, you might try Kubuntu instead. It has more of a Windows Vista look and feel to it but it requires a bit more processor and RAM to run efficiently. I currently have Kubuntu installed on an AMD processor machine running at 3.2 GHz and 2 gigs of RAM and an 80-gig SATA HDD. Runs great! I got stuck at 800X600 resolution but switched to a newer monitor (it must’ve been “plug and play”) and the resolution problems went away. Video card is NVIDIA GEForce 7100.
Quite frankly I’m suprised you are having so many problems with Ubuntu. If all else fails, get a second drive and slave it off of the Windows drive and install Kubuntu or Xubuntu or Ubuntu there. If there is any way to update your BIOS, you might look into that also; but I hardly think that will be the cause of the problems you’re having.
By the way, there is a version of Avast! Antivirus for Linux at http://www.avast.com. It works great, although it doesn’t seem to run in the background. All scans and virus pattern updates have to be done manually.
Another neat thing I’ve noticed about the Ubuntu family: Let’s say you install PHP, Apache2 and MySQL (they call the whole package “LAMP”.) Linux will update your Apache config file for you automatically when you add PHP and it all works perfectly together.
You know how to get ahold of me; feel free to do so if you continue to have problems. ~Jon