Unable to get Linux Mint Running (SOLVED)

[richyrich]

At the login screen, click Session, change to Failsafe Gnome, login. Once in, open the Hardware Drivers program to see if you can download proprietary video drivers. Also make sure to check your display settings, and that your monitor is recognized.

[richyrich]

Now it is sounding like a bad install. Your /home folder should have been auto-created during install.

1) How did you install? Through the Live CD? or through mint4win?
2) Did you check the md5sum of the iso file before burning? And did you burn as slow as possible?

Please tell us the steps you took during your install?

regards, Richard

[hoe]

Try a reinstall first and see if that helps first ... sometimes it does ...

Wayne

[richyrich]

If you want to check the iso file In Windows you need an md5sum checker:

http://www.md5summer.org/

once generated, you should check it against the Gloria Main 32bit md5 : 64e2a290fb51f8e7a9d058355fe93d0e

They should match exactly!

OR, when you boot the Live CD, when the first Mint screen starts with "loading in 9 seconds . ." . press the spacebar. You will be presented with a menu, choose "Check the integrity of the Live CD", this may take a while.

[william]

Maybe not the issue but as stated, follow the instructions on checking the md5sum here on page 8 and compare it against '64e2a290fb51f8e7a9d058355fe93d0e'...it is really quick to do this...at least it will be confirmed though:
http://ftp.heanet.ie/pub/linuxmint.com/ ... nglish.pdf

I did a side-by-side install and had errors (though I was able to boot into Mint) - so I wiped the partitions and did it over using the manual install setup and it works - just an option in case this does not work for you.

(Did you create the space/partition for Linux to be installed on?)

[william]

You're talking about the manual partitioning during LinuxMint install rather than going with side-by-side, right?

Yes, there are 3 or 4 options during the install (side by side, in biggest space, the whole drive, and manual) - I tried side by side and had issues, then I did it manually and created the swap, /, and /home partitions via the manual process and it was fine after that. There was some kind of space issue on my install when I did it 'side-by-side.'

Also, did you create space or a partition for your install of Mint or does XP have the whole disk partition assigned to it?

[william]

That's a match on the md5sum.

Yeah.

I did some searching, and not saying it is it, but in threead https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+sour ... bug/269215, it is mentioned:

"This may not be why it happens to everyone, but during beta ISO testing I noticed that this happens if you run out of space on /home. This is a regression of some feature work done in a previous release to make sure the user can always log in even if they run out of disk space (the overflow-tmpfs-on-/tmp init script).
I dug into this a little bit. The cause is that an attempt to mkdir $HOME/.gconf fails due to ENOSPC. This is in the resolve_address function in backends/xml-backend.c, called via gconf_resolve_address from the check_gconf function in gconf/gconf-sanity-check.c"

So, as I had the space issue when I tried side-by-side, this may be the same issue with you - it seems side-by-side does not allocate enough space (though I am not the expert). When I made free space in my Windows partition and then manually installed Linux and set the partition sizes, I had no space issue. Not saying this is the issue with you, but sounds similar. I have to go but if questions about manual install, just line 'em up.

[lagagnon]

Anyone feel like walking me through it?

No, it has been done for you already in the Mint Guide, available at the Mint website, pages 16-18:
http://ftp.heanet.ie/pub/linuxmint.com/ ... nglish.pdf

[william]

Dude I'll help later on tonight...I have had no sleep so I will waste the day in slumber; but later I'll go over how I did it. The PDF listed above helps, but not fully. But before I sleep, here is a quick list of what I did to get things done (pulled from many threads) - not detailed though:

-Defrag'd Windows (I have Vista) - I followed another sites suggestion and turned off hybernate and page filing, rebooted, then deleted that space, then I defragged
-Then I shrunk my Windows partion by about 35 Gigs to make space for Mint (if more or less spaced needed, then adhust)
-Then I rebooted Windows and turned hybernate and pagefiling back on
---above steps not needed if already have a big enough partition allocated for Mint---
-Then I loaded Mint ISO and selected install
-I chose manual install
-I created 3 partitions: swap partion with swap format (2 x RAM = 4Gigs for me); / partition with Ext3 file system (I used 11Gigs here - people suggest 8-12Gigs); /home partition with Ext3 file system (I used 19 Gigs here - some people make it around 10 and some more than me from what I read - this is where I will store my stuff) - NOTE: some say to create a smaller /home (around 10Gigs or maybe less - not sure) and then to create a seperate /data partition with a lot of space for your needs - and I think they say to put in in NTFS format to share between Windows and Mint - but not sure on this. I just created a /home partition as this is where I will keep my stuff. But I am newbie as you so do not know all of the pros and cons of each option - but it works eh.
-Last step is an advanced step that I wanted to do. Before saying ok a screen or two later, click on advanced. You have the option of where to install the booter (Grub in this case). My first attempts I installed it in the MBR (just the normal option without choosing advanced). But then if I deleted Mint, I could not boot into Windows without using repair disk. So I chose to install Grub in the / partition instead - and then I edited the Vista boot process to point to the Grub boot process. If you want a setup like this, it will be easier for you since you use XP - I think someone said it is easy to use a third party booter to edit and point to your operating systems in XP. There are links in the forum for that but have to find it.
-Then it worked...hurray!

Thing that frustrated me was that there were so many options to choose from for each step and I did not have the knowledge to make the best choices - some digging helped but still not sure. And the 'side by side' install issue with the loading of Mint pooched me (and propbably other newbs as they will likely just click and choose it) - but it led me to take the step to do some digging and do the manual install. I did not plan to type this much before going to sleep, but could not stop...lol. Good luck, type out detailed questions before starting if you have them, and many on here are helpful from reading around. Main thing for me to tell you to consider is how you want the boot process to be managed and then make a decision from there - do you want to Mint boot loader (Grub) to have control, or Windows, or a third party booter. I think I would go third party on its own partition so you can wipe any partition and install any OS without messing up the booting of the other OS's. Mud? Yeah me too.

No spell check now, just sleep. Good Luck.

[william]

This is the same thing that happened to me. I believe it's something in the partition manager. I am dual booting windows xp as well, and for some reason after I selected to run them both side by side, the partition manager resized my NTFS partition to where I only had about 2.5GB left and then Linux Mint used the 2.5GB for installation. Once I rebooted I had the black screen and mouse pointer only.

I used GParted to resize my partition back to the way I had it before, reinstalled Linux Mint and then manually partitioned the drives. Works fine now. Hope this helps. . .

Side by side install option...Megga @%$&! Congrats on getting manual install working Feels good when its done.

[william]

woohoo! congrats! Now you feel like I did when it all works (but took me three times...lol).