[SOLVED] Installing linux mint 11

[cannon_dt]

Hello all !
I have an old 512 MB dv1040 US HP laptop with Helena (LM on it and now i am trying to get it to LM 11.
Here are the issues:
1. The CD / DVD drive is gone bonkers - 1 out of 10 times it reads the disc and when I get to install things go haywire and I get "Installer crashed" - I see an IO error so I am attributing it to my crazy drive
2. My laptop is old and in BIOS there is no USB, so I cannot do this via a bootable USB. Only Floppy Drive, HDD and Network Adapter are the options left.

I am still trying to get the DVD to work (I burnt the 32 bit gnome ISO onto it - the full DVD) but I am not too hopeful.

What are my options? BTW - in an attempt to do what I did earlier I managed to overwrite LM8 with Win XP, this is because the laptop came with Windows which I got rid of immediately to get to Linux, so I thought I would redo that stunt. Win XP has installed well (god dammit !!), so now I am actually trying to get rid of win xp and get to LM11.

Is there someway I can use the n/w adapter? Or can I somehow install off the hDD? Please help, I am not a very advanced user - so please be a little patient with me

Thanks,
Ananth

[xenopeek]

You can use the Plop Boot Manager for this. You can easily make a floppy disk to boot the Plop Boot Manager from: http://www.plop.at/en/bootmanager.html#runflp. After booting from the Plop Boot Manager, you can then choose to continue the boot from a different medium, like CD or USB.

Alternatively, you can add the Plop Boot Manager to your currently installed Linux' GRUB menu. I guess Helena is GRUB 1, so you would follow this guide for that: http://www.plop.at/en/bootmanager.html#rungrub

[cannon_dt]

Thanks Vincent.
But more problems
My laptop is gone - it does not let me get into windows also.
Also all I have is another laptop (my office one) with windows XP - is it possible to do linuxmint via tftpd32 installed in my office laptop?

Both the plop options are out - I think the floppy drive is a CON ! I don't see any compartment for it and I cannot add the plop to my current GRUB as my laptop is konked !!

One other thing - one of those rare occasions when my LM 11 live disc was read well, I did an integrity check and it returned as 6 files were problematic. I used the full version dvd 32 bit versions - do you think my live disc could have a problem too?

Ananth

[xenopeek]

Well, this all sounds pretty horrible. Do you mean to say you don't actually have a floppy drive on the laptop? I'm not sure about the integrity problems with the DVD, it sounds more like the hardware of the CD/DVD player is failing. As for tftpd32, I don't think this will work if you can't login to Windows anymore...

The DVD installer might also be failing because it runs out of memory (512 MiB is the minimum requirement, so it should be fine, but still...). If you have a separate swap partition for Helena, figure out what the device name of that is (/dev/sdaX, where X is a number, probably). You can run "sudo parted -l" to figure it out, or start GParted from the menu. Then before you start the installer, activate that swap partition also for Linux Mint 11 with command "sudo swapon /dev/sdaX" (where /dev/sdaX again matches what you found earlier).

Another suggestion might be to burn the ISO of Plop to a CD, and then boot from that on the failing laptop (it is very small, so should load fast hopefully without problems). Then from Plop continue the boot to Linux Mint 11 which you have put on a USB stick with UNetbootin or something similar.

[cannon_dt]

Vincent,
You would probably beat me now but I am now stuck with a new problem.

I redownloaded and reburnt the ISO on my XP machine and this time the live CD worked and guess what, I installed LM 11. And then the good news ended.
After installing, when I powered on it is stuck with a blinking cursor

I dont know what is wrong now. Once before I managed to get the live CD working and I tested my wireless connection, tried firefox and gparted and all was well. So I was pretty sure that all I needed was to get the LM installed and now I dont know if it is proving too much for my poor laptop. I am now clueless as to what to do. The installation went fine because after configuring hardware, it came to the terminal prompt saying preparing for powering down or something like that and then it asked me to eject the media. I did all that and now all I have is a blank screen.

Now I am totally lost as now I have it installed yet my laptop is now a glorified paperweight

Ananth

[xenopeek]

Okay. Did you select anything special for Linux Mint 11 to install the GRUB boot manager to? If you didn't select anything, fine, proceed. If you did specify where the installer was to install the GRUB boot manager, please share (if you can recall) what you selected.

If you didn't select anything for the GRUB boot manager installation location (that is, you never got the question or picked the default), do you get to the GRUB boot menu, or do you immediately go to the blinking cursor thingy? If the latter, please hold left shift during boot to get the GRUB boot menu to show. Then press 'e' to edit the boot parameters, and scroll down to the line starting with "linux" and replace "quiet splash" with "acpi=off nomodeset" (without the quotes). See if this allows you to boot successfully, or at least if it will give you some error message.

[cannon_dt]

Vincent,
I went with only defaults - I did not change anything at all, just keep looking at it to see if something fails.

Now I tried to edit the grub parameters but no luck. I get the HP invent splash (with the Press ESC to enter BIOS etc) and from then on I kept the SHIFT key pressed but the damn blinking cursor is all I see. Is there some way else of booting in safe mode or something.

I thank you sincerely for helping me out so much but I am having a horrible time with this.

Ananth

[cannon_dt]

I tried another thing. Fired up again with my live CD and this time in the Linux mint options I chose "Boot from local disk" - still the blank blinking cursor

Is there something I can do to get in via the live CD and change something?

Ananth

[xenopeek]

I tried another thing. Fired up again with my live CD and this time in the Linux mint options I chose "Boot from local disk" - still the blank blinking cursor

Is there something I can do to get in via the live CD and change something?

Ananth

Well, if GRUB also isn't showing... That is bad. Two things to do:
1. From the Live CD open the file browser, and in the toolbar (the thingy with the icons) select the computer screen icon (just right of the little house icon). You should see here the file system on your harddisk. Double-click it to mount it and explore it. See if there is anything here at all.
2. Because GRUB is not showing at all, I'm suspecting it isn't installed properly. From the Live CD download and install Ubuntu Boot Repair, and use that to reinstall GRUB to /dev/sda (the MBR of the first hard disk). https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Boot- ... _in_Ubuntu

[cannon_dt]

I see both a 80 GB Hard Disk File System and File System Icons? Is that correct? (I guess the File System Icon is that of the live CD right?)

Upon opening the 80GB thingie icon, I see bin, boot etc. Looks like a good install as far and as little as I know. Under home I see my name's folder, I explored boot (it has grub folder - I opened grub.cfg via the text editor). So I dont think the install is rotten.

When I tried to install boot repair via the terminal,
I got "Could not find platform independent libraries <prefix>" followed by "Consider setting $PYTHONHOME to ,prefix.[:<exec_prefix>]" followed by "Import error: Mo module named site".
How do I do boot repair now?

[cannon_dt]

Hold on Vincent - I forgot to set up wireless, let me try install after setting it up, it is so frustratingly slow. Sorry

[cannon_dt]

One other thing (I am still trying to get my session up, it hung and I restarted!!).
While installation I kept my internet turned off, I dont know if this could have screwed up the install in some way

[xenopeek]

One other thing (I am still trying to get my session up, it hung and I restarted!!).
While installation I kept my internet turned off, I dont know if this could have screwed up the install in some way

Generally not; it will just download and install updates, which you can also do after installation. It is intended for people with fast broadband connections, so the installer has something to do

[cannon_dt]

OK, now i definitely need help.
I got wireless up.
And now in the terminal, I get HTTP Error 401: Unauthorized

[cannon_dt]

Vincent,
I finally got it up and running, I did the recommended repair and it is taking forever
Now what exactly should I do with the advanced options?
Should I just do the place GRUB into sda or should I do a reinstall GRUB? It is quite intimidating - the advanced options I mean

[cannon_dt]

http://paste.ubuntu.com/745373/
This is the link it gave me, I am running it again to install to sda, please do let me know if I need to do anything else. I dont know if I can get another live session up again

Ananth

[cannon_dt]

VINCENT !!
You wizard !
I guess the boot-repair did it !!! I did both the recommended repair and the install to sda (really did not know which worked but got another URL http://paste.ubuntu.com/745379)
All in all - I restarted, saw the GRUB and now it is working like a peach.
Awesome !! Thanks a ton, definitely worth staying up till 2:40 AM (India!!)

Thanks,
Ananth

[xenopeek]

Okay, I was just typing a reply so I'll cut that short and just congratulate you on getting this fixed I'm thankful this was it, else I would have been lost a bit for next step

Enjoy the new install!

Be sure to apply updates now, as the software on the CD/DVD installer is a few months old there are probably a lot of updates to remove bugs or improve functionality/security. With internet working, open the Update Manager (shield icon in the lower right on the panel).

[cannon_dt]

Oh, I am sure you would have the next step up your sleeve
Will do all the updates tomorrow.
Thanks again for all the patience.

Peace.
Ananth

[xenopeek]

Will do all the updates tomorrow.

Eh, yeah... Sorry, I meant do it soon. Good night & go get some sleep