[CS-FSLUG] Troubleshooting Installation Failures

[Tim Young]

Hi Don,
I think the first question is "why do you need to upgrade?"  If you 
needed to upgrade because something on the HD was being mangled, then, 
yes, you can probably bet that is the problem.

If the computer was running fine but you wanted to upgrade for some 
other reason, then the HD is probably working, there is just some 
problem with installing...

Like Mash said, the bst place to start, if you are trying to see what is 
wrong with the HD, is by booting off a CD anr testing out the HD.  If 
you can boot to a command-line, you will usually see any HD errors 
reported to your screen.

The first thing I would try, would be to look at the existing HD 
partition table.
/fdisk -l /dev/hda
/(the -l is the lower-case letter L)

If the partitions seem intact, I usually mount them.
/mkdir /mnt/temp; mount /dev/hda1 /mnt/tmp/
then I fill up the HD with zeroes, making a huge file.  Then I delete 
that huge file.  No damage done.
/cd /mnt/tmp; dd if=/dev/zero of=tmpfile; sync; sleep 1; rm tmpfile/
This will write to basically every empty block, which should cause a 
damaged HD to scream bloody-murder.

You can run:
/ e2fsck -c -c /dev/hda1
/Which will check the HD for bad blocks, assuming you are using an ext2 
or ext3 filesystem.  You can use the "badblocks" program otherwise. 
(/man badblocks/)

- -
Of course, the other possibilities are that the controller is going 
out.  The easiest test for that is to take the HD in question, after 
doing the previous tests (which should give you all sorts of errors if 
the controller is bad) and sticking it in a known good computer.  If you 
run the same tests on the HD and it works fine in the known good 
computer, the controller on the other computer is shot.  :)

If you are being paid by the hour, it is possible to get some decent 
CPUs for around $250-$300.  Often times it is the wisest decision to 
spend the $ at the beginning.  :)
- -

If the HD does seem to be working, if there do not seem to be too many 
bad-blocks, and the controller does not freak on you when you write to 
every block of data on the HD, then there is a problem with the install 
process.  Usually having the process halt where you say it is halting is 
due to the partitioner failing.  If it tries to partion the HD, and it 
cannot, all the rest of the proccess goes Kaput.  So, while you are 
booted in text-mode Knoppix or Ubuntu, do some of the process manually.

Using fdisk (the "m" key is "help"), partition the HD.
/fdisk /dev/hda
/I usually like to have a boot partition, swap, and then the rest is data.
hda1 = 90mb
hda2 = 512mb (swap)
hda3 = rest
Make sure you set the first partition active ( the key in fdisk is "a")

Then, format the HD from the command-line:
/mke2fs /dev/hda1
mke2label /fev/hda1 "/boot"
mke2fs /dev/hda3
mke2label /fev/hda3 "/"
mkswap /dev/hda2
/
If you have not had problems to this point, you should be able to go 
back into the Ubuntu installer and go from there.  See if you can avoid 
having it repartition for you.

- -

Hope you can get the computer back up and working,

    - Tim Young


Don Parris wrote:

> I've got an older box (300MHz/256RAM/6GB Seagate Medalist HDD) that 
> seems to fail on installation.  The box originally experienced 
> problems under Windows about 6 months ago, and was considered to be a 
> virus box.  I loaded Ubuntu 4.10 - problem solved.  However, now I 
> need to upgrade, but can't get ANY distro to install.  Not even the 
> Ubuntu 4.10.  I've tried Ubuntu 5.04, SUSE 10.0 OSS *and* the 
> commercial edition.  All do great right up to the point where the 
> files transfer to the HDD.  Almost everything fails.  Ubuntu even 
> brought me to the horrid Debian package selection utility I loathe.
>
> My guess is the hard drive.  However, I can't seem to get other HDDs 
> to even be recognized on this box. :-(  Any ideas? I'm definitely 
> lost.  I'm thinking seriously about just telling the poor lady she 
> needs a new box.
>
> Don
>
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