Mint 12 install hangs or presents comand prompt.

[Detonate]

When you get to the first menu press the e key on your keyboard before it boots. The edit the boot line and add nomodeset to the options.

the boot line will look like this for mint.

/casper/vmlinuz file=/cdrom/preseed/mint.seed boot=casper quiet splash --

Edit it to look like this.

/casper/vmlinuz file=/cdrom/preseed/mint.seed boot=casper quiet splash nomodeset--

After editing the line press F10 to boot.

[safrab62]

Second follow up ...

valid for CD and DVD

1) Documentation bug: The handbook says, the grub menu comes as the second screen. It comes if one hits a key during this "Booting in n seconds". The handbook "forgot this to mention.

2) Due to recommendations in x threads about not booting I've chosen Mint compatibility mode. The black screen comes up. The Handbook says, that this is a splash screen. Form other distros (Gentoo, Suse, Fedora) I know, that one can show boot details at this point. And yes, I remember this is hitting F2. Yeeeeah, I see it. It starts initializing things.

3) It cones to "Checking battery state ..." THERE IT HANGS!!! Well, I'm on a normal workstation. There is no battery - of course. Maybe I'll go further with acpic=no, we'll see. For now the only thing I can do is push the power button. The sequence goes on, deinitialises things, ejects the CD/DVD and after I close the tray shuts down the machine - GRRREAT

Hope the community reads this. I don't know how such a BoB could get to the first place on distrowatch. Maybe the owner had the luck to own one of the not so many HW Mint works for. There is lot of CPU, graphics, disk combinations Mint simply doesn't work for. I've added ALL not notebook platforms with this post.

Regards
Frank

[Detonate]

Add the following to your command line.

acpi=off

/casper/vmlinuz file=/cdrom/preseed/mint.seed boot=casper quiet splash nomodeset acpi=off--

[safrab62]

Well, yes, thanks.

acpi=off - not acpic=no

Frank

[safrab62]

So OK, done it

My configuration onesmore:
A workstation - no Notebook and hence ... no battery other than the CMOS one
AMD Athlon II x4
8GB RAM
Nvidia Geforce 8
/dev/sda1 boot partition for grub
/dev/sda2 swap
/dev/dsa3 Gentoo system
/dev/sdb1 Linux Mint

sda is a 500GB disk
sdb is a 2TB disk split into 4x 500GB

I installed Mint into /dev/sdb1
The installer folund the existing Gentoo system .... great
The installer recognizet the connected WEBCam and took a photo of me .... even greater

after rebootiong I get a framebuffer screen, things are initialized
......
..... and it comes to the point where it checks battery and sits there
......
It doesn't do anything if I hold a key during boot. Seems the installer has messed up my grub installation.
I can only shut down the macine as it was with the life DVD/CD.

Today I had to use the Gentoo life DVD to bring grub back alife. Worked Luckily there are other distros

Seems all is installed.

Can someone send the grub.conf line for the Mint installation on /dev/sdb1?
I'd give it a try.

How do I disable services on Mint. I assume I'll have to disable this battery checking thing during boot.

Thanks
Frank

[mariku]

Hi,

while I am not sure if or to what extent my problem with installing Mint has to do with this thread, and being fully aware of the limited resources the Mint team has at their disposal as well as the great work they indeed do do, I must say this does not sound good at all.

I did quite a lot of reading before deciding to try my debut with Linux via Mint 12 LXDE, and did not expect to run into such problems that early on, not even being able to install. Maybe with RC, but with "Stable"? Hm. Isn't that what Mint is supposed to be about - Linux in a form that most reasonably computer savvy people without Linux experience can install and use, at least with some hours of learning about it online?

I have been trying to find a solution for two days now, here in the forums and in many other places. I'm giving Mint two more days; if despite my best efforts I can not get it to install on my not-that-old laptop, I will find myself a different distro that does. It's all nice to have a great user experience, and Mint may be one of or even the best distro in that regard, but that's not worth anything if I can't install it.

I really have the feeling that I would love Mint if I would get a chance to actually use it, but I am not looking for a toy, I am looking for something I can use to be productive and rely on. So far, this is not it.

Don't get me wrong: If there are any knowledgeable people out there who can tell me how to get this to run, I would be very grateful! I'm most willing to learn and reasonably computer savvy, but I simply do not have the time to become a Linux expert only to be able to test drive Linux Mint.

If you think you can help me and can spare a minute or two, I would really appreciate if you could have a quick look here:

viewtopic.php?f=175&t=96898&p=553704#p553704

As you can see in that thread, I'm not the only one with the exact same problem (no desktop during installation ever showing up, just a terminal), and the problem seemingly was reported during RC already and is still there... all this is not suitable to increase my trust in Mint, as much as I hate to say it.

I still have hope...

Cheers,

Matt

[mariku]

Brief update: Check out above mentioned thread - a simple solution has been found, kindly worked out by JohnYate!

Thank you to everyone who has been thinking about this. I am glad that I can really start with Mint 12 LXDE now!

Cheers,

Matt

[mariku]

I just have to post this to put things into perspective from a newbie's point of view, because I think this may be helpful for other greenhorns like me:

Yes, I was disappointed to run into the above issue so early on when trying to switch to Linux. Yes, I was surprised that there seemed to be very little information about my problem.

BUT, and this is what counts: I got help from the community here, and within a day or two I had a solution that worked perfectly. Also, so far I did not run into any more issues with Mint that I could not solve myself by doing a bit of reading.

The conclusion from this for me is that I have adjusted my expectations about how things will work for me and Mint: I can not necessarily always expect to find a million web pages explaining perfect solutions for my particular problem at the first internet search that I do; but there will be a solution after some digging and asking around, there are people who really want to help and are very capable, and, most importantly, after two or so weeks on Mint LXDE I can now wholeheartedly say that the resulting system is 100 times more worth that effort than Windows!

I find all this truly empowering, not only via knowledge, but also plain and simple because my machine has never before just WORKED so well and snappy without any issues, and that's ultimately what I need.

So: I think Mint and I may have a long and happy future waiting for us.

If you're a beginner and feel stuck somehow, do yourself a favour and persevere. Very most likely you will not regret it.

Cheers,

Matt