Hello,
I downloaded the 7.2 Mandrake linux tree from one of the mirror
sites, and attempted a hard disk install. I chose the 'recommended'
option, as this is my first experience with linux.
All went well until I reached the 'Setup filesystems' step, at which
point the DrakX Partitioning wizard, asked me to choose a partitioning
option. I selected the 'Use free space on windows partition' option, and
was asked to "Please wait. Computing Windows filesystem bounds". A
minute of hard disk activity followed, at the end of which the disk
thrashed for a few seconds.
A dialog then appeared stating "Warning. DrakX will now resize your
Windows partition. Be careful ....... Ok Cancel". At this point,
the system hangs. The mouse pointer still moves, but nothing responds to
mouse clicks.
I then tried a text mode install. Again all went well until after I
selected the 'Use free space on windows partition' option. After
selecting this, I was asked what size I wanted to keep for the windows
partition. I entered 6GB, and was then told "Resizing. resize_fat:
Partition size will be 4095MB". Then after a minute of disk activity and
again a final few seconds of thrashing, the following messages
appear: "Install exited abnormally -- received signal 9."
"Sending terminator signals ... done."
"Sending kill signals ... done."
"unmounting filesystems ..."
"you may safely reboot your system."
I am rather at a loss as to what the cause of my problem. It seems
to be related to partitioning my disk (I have a Quantum Fireball Plus LM
15GB ATA66), but I really know very little about it. In case its
relevant, the rest of my system is:
- Pentium III 733MHz, 128MB RAM
- Lucent WinModem (ugh ... can I use this in Linux?)
- Sony CD (read-only)
- Gigabyte GA-GF2560 Geforce256 graphics card
- Gigabyte GA-60XM7E (Intel 815E chipset) motherboard.
One thing has me puzzled. The Mandrake website says the full 7.2
tree download is about 1GB, but after I downloaded it, it was only about
660MB. Can I have missed something in the download that would cause the
hang ? Could the mirror I used be faulty ?
I might try downloading the iso images and using WinImage to extract
the full 7.2 tree. This approach works according to an article on the
Mandrake website, but the problem it was addressing is not identical to
mine.
Sorry that this post has become a little long-winded, but I wanted
to be as thorough as I could. My sincere thanks to any who can advise me
with this problem. I am very eager to try linux, after years of
suffering with that other OS, and Mandrake seems a very good
introduction.
regards,
Charles.
