Installing Mint 11 Xfce on a Compaq 615 Laptop

[gcollin]

Hi,

I've recently acquired a Compaq 615 Laptop (2Gb RAM; 320Gb ATA Hitachi HTS543232L9A300 HDD), which initially had a corrupted WinXP installation on it (it would only boot into safe mode). I'm installing Mint 11 Xfce (Debian) onto this machine, and everything appears to install ok, however the machine will not boot from the internal HDD.

I've tried setting the partition to bootable, using the Disk Utility but, after a while, I get the follwoing error dialogue:

Error modifying partition
An error occurred while performing an operation on "32GB Filesystem" (Partition 1 of ATA Hitachi HTS543232L9A300): Unknown error


Clicking "Details" provides the following:

Message did not receive a reply (timeout by message bus)

--

"SMART Status" in Disk Utility is showing "Disk is healthy"

--

mint@mint ~ $ lspci
00:00.0 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] RS780 Host Bridge
00:01.0 PCI bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] RS780/RS880 PCI to PCI bridge (int gfx)
00:04.0 PCI bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] RS780 PCI to PCI bridge (PCIE port 0)
00:07.0 PCI bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] RS780 PCI to PCI bridge (PCIE port 3)
00:09.0 PCI bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] RS780/RS880 PCI to PCI bridge (PCIE port 4)
00:11.0 SATA controller: ATI Technologies Inc SB700/SB800 SATA Controller [AHCI mode]
00:12.0 USB Controller: ATI Technologies Inc SB700/SB800 USB OHCI0 Controller
00:12.1 USB Controller: ATI Technologies Inc SB700 USB OHCI1 Controller
00:12.2 USB Controller: ATI Technologies Inc SB700/SB800 USB EHCI Controller
00:13.0 USB Controller: ATI Technologies Inc SB700/SB800 USB OHCI0 Controller
00:13.1 USB Controller: ATI Technologies Inc SB700 USB OHCI1 Controller
00:13.2 USB Controller: ATI Technologies Inc SB700/SB800 USB EHCI Controller
00:14.0 SMBus: ATI Technologies Inc SBx00 SMBus Controller (rev 3a)
00:14.2 Audio device: ATI Technologies Inc SBx00 Azalia (Intel HDA)
00:14.3 ISA bridge: ATI Technologies Inc SB700/SB800 LPC host controller
00:14.4 PCI bridge: ATI Technologies Inc SBx00 PCI to PCI Bridge
00:14.5 USB Controller: ATI Technologies Inc SB700/SB800 USB OHCI2 Controller
00:18.0 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] Family 11h Processor HyperTransport Configuration (rev 40)
00:18.1 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] Family 11h Processor Address Map
00:18.2 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] Family 11h Processor DRAM Controller
00:18.3 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] Family 11h Processor Miscellaneous Control
00:18.4 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] Family 11h Processor Link Control
01:05.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc RS780M/RS780MN [Radeon HD 3200 Graphics]
02:00.0 Ethernet controller: Marvell Technology Group Ltd. 88E8042 PCI-E Fast Ethernet Controller (rev 10)
06:00.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4312 802.11b/g LP-PHY (rev 01)

--

I've started again from scratch, re-installing 3-times so far, all with the same results.

I'm currently only running from the boot CD/DVD to send this ...

Anybody seen this before, or have any ideas?

Many thanks.

-Graeme.

[AlbertP]

Run fsck to check the partition for errors please.

Code: Select all

sudo fsck -a /dev/sda1

Please make sure that /dev/sda1 is the name of the partition, that causes your problems.

If it's a FAT or NTFS partition I recommend to use Windows' chkdsk to check it. Chkdsk generally finds more errors than fsck. By the way, fsck can't even check NTFS partitions.

[gcollin]

/dev/sda1 is correct ... fstype is ext3 ... Windows no longer exists on machine.

[AlbertP]

OK if it is ext3, you don't need Windows. Then just run fsck -a /dev/sda1 (might need sudo, not sure about that).

[gcollin]

Already done that ...

mint@mint ~ $ sudo fsck -a /dev/sda1
fsck from util-linux-ng 2.17.2
/dev/sda1: clean, 134862/1966080 files, 881201/7864320 blocks

[oobetimer]

Manual partitioning can help. You can use GParted Cfdisk, Fdisk or some another method.

For example fdisk with drive sda:

sudo fdisk /dev/sda

p (print the partition table)

d (delate a partition)

n (create a new partition, eg. primary 1 and 10GB = +10000M)

a (set a boot flag)

p

n

t (set a partition type eg swap)

82

...and so on

w (writes the changest to the disk)

sudo mkfs.ext3 -c /dev/sdxy (makes a filesystem )

sudo mkswap -c /dev/sdxy (makes a swap system)

[gcollin]

I actually used GParted to splat the old Windows partition, and set the disk up in the first place:

/dev/sda1 = / (ext3)
/dev/sda2 = swap (no fs - allocated as linux-swap)
/dev/sda3 = /home (ext3)

Then installed Linux using that partition table ... it's always come up trumps in the past on other machines (albeit, usually using (k)ubuntu) ...

This time, this machine ... it simply doesn't want to know ...

-G.

[oobetimer]

I actually used GParted to splat the old Windows partition, and set the disk up in the first place:

/dev/sda1 = / (ext3)
/dev/sda2 = swap (no fs - allocated as linux-swap)
/dev/sda3 = /home (ext3)

Then installed Linux using that partition table ... it's always come up trumps in the past on other machines (albeit, usually using (k)ubuntu) ...

This time, this machine ... it simply doesn't want to know ...

-G.

If you have an another computer, you can install linux using USB All-In-1 Hard Disk Link

http://translate.google.fi/translate?sl ... -Disk-Link

[gcollin]

The OS appears to be there, on the disk, the problem seems to be with getting the bootstrap up and running ...

[AlbertP]

I think you installed Grub to /dev/sda1 instead of /dev/sda.
I agree, the Mint installer is a bit confusing here. I've made the same mistake when I first installed Mint.

[gcollin]

I have tried installing to both sda and sda1 (sda was the one I tried first) on several occaisions.

I have tried re-installing Grub (successfully, I'm informed), but this hasn't changed the situation at all.

-G.

[AlbertP]

What error do you get during boot?

By the way, setting a partition as bootable is only required for Windows' bootloader.

[gcollin]

I don't see an error massage before it tries to netboot, even if I try to force an HDD boot from the BIOS.

When the netboot eventually times out, I get something along the lines of "missing system disk, or not bootable disk" ...

When I'm booted from CD/DVD, I can quite happily see, and mount, the disk partitions, and view/modify their contents.

-G.

[gcollin]

A small update ... on recommendation, I've created and tried booting from a super-grub2-disk, which works fine.

-G.