[eki]

Hello all you hidden (or not) techie experts !!

I am having big difficulties to install linux ubuntu 8.04 on my home pc. I downloaded the iso file then burnt it on a cd. Then I turned on my home pc which currently runs on windows XP. Put the cd in and it does not autorun. Open the D: folder and I find 2 application files umenu.exe and wubi.exe
I have tried both. First one reboots and tries to boot from the cd. Second one installs files on c drive (but does not offer the choice of formatting the disc) and then asks for a reboot. In both cases when I reboot my keyboard and mouse do not respond: I get a screen just after the memoy check to choose a language or to choose booting xp or ubuntu and I cannot use the arrows to choose. What is even funnier is that before getting to that screen, during the memory check, I can use my keyboard to go to the setup menu...

Anyway, since english is the default language after 30 sec it continues and starts to boot from the cd. But then it just hangs when it gets to the ubuntu desktop screen. And that's it ! Keyboard and mouse do not respond.

Note: keyboard and mouse are connected through usb.

I tried various forums but they either talk about a wrong iso file (I am trying to download it anew to check again) or screens that I can't get to...
Anyone has any ideas?

I am tempted to just format the hard disc and try booting from the cd. I have backe dup all my files anyway. How should I format the disc? through windows? through command prompt?


Thanks

[twist]

Don't format your hard disk unless you intend to get rid of windows altogether. Instead, create some space for ubuntu to get installed into (otherwise it will probably delete windows for you) -- either add a new hard disk, or defrag your existing one and shrink the windows partition(s) so that there is space for ubuntu (you'll need around 1GB free disk space, absolute minimum).

Next, inert the ubuntu CD and boot from it (I assume you have the desktop CD, not the alternate CD or the server CD, please tell me if I'm wrong).

What you should see after booting the CD is the GRUB menu screen you've described. You may also see a little countdown ticking away. Do you? If you do, then ignore the menu for now and see what happens when the timer reaches 0 -- you should find yourself being dumped into a desktop. Do your keyboard and mouse work now? Of they do, then that's grand -- double click the install button and install the system.

If not, then I have no idea. Well, I mean I suspect that this would be a result of your USB chipset not having driver support in the Ubuntu CD, but fixing this problem without a keyboard is very difficult. Do you have a PS/2 keyboard you could use if the ubuntu livecd session doesn't work either? (my assumption, in case you haven't guessed, is that GRUB doesn't know how to drive your USB ports, but once you're booted into a session, everything will start working because you'll have a full kernel and mostly complete set of device drivers at your disposal)

[eki]

thanks twist.

actually I am in your "I have no idea" scenario becaue when I get to the desktop my keyboard and mouse do not work and I do not see any menu to continue with the instalation.
I tried with another mouse (still usb) but same result and I have no old keyboard to try with. So I am really stuck.

in the meantime I downloaded again the ubuntu iso image and burnt is an an image again using a different program (just in case it was my file's fault). But no luck.

(by the way yes I have the desktop vesion).

So... I am really thinking of formatting my disk because in any case I do not want to keep windows. I just have never formated it before and I am unsure of what's the best way to do it.

I will try to find a PS/2 keyboard and if not I will format my disk. I wish I could be sure that the installation will work on the formated disk.

wife already teasing me ... "windows is not too bad afte all", "oh yes! thus ubuntu is really fast" ;-)

[misterjaytee]

Don't know if it helps, but as a damn good techie myself (blows own trumpet, no smut please ), I had trouble installing Ubuntu on an old PC a few weeks ago - it hung during install and I tried just about every trick in the book. I started with the USB Keyboard/Mouse theory and put good old PS/2 device in place, but still no joy.

In the end, I installed Fedora 9 instead and everything was okay - Fedora 9 is quite similar and gives a bit more flexibility than Ubuntu. My 11-year old son has got to grips with the Fedora desktop (and worryingly edited the registry last week while sorting an issue with Wine and Google Sketchup ).

I think there's an issue with Ubuntu and old hardware (particularly old VGA hardware with only 1meg (or 2) of memory on the graphics card) - if you think you're in this camp try Fedora and see if it installs.

[twist]

eki, on Sep 20 2008, 09:53 AM, said:

thanks twist.

actually I am in your "I have no idea" scenario becaue when I get to the desktop my keyboard and mouse do not work and I do not see any menu to continue with the instalation.
I tried with another mouse (still usb) but same result and I have no old keyboard to try with. So I am really stuck.

in the meantime I downloaded again the ubuntu iso image and burnt is an an image again using a different program (just in case it was my file's fault). But no luck.

(by the way yes I have the desktop vesion).

So... I am really thinking of formatting my disk because in any case I do not want to keep windows. I just have never formated it before and I am unsure of what's the best way to do it.

Er, is this the same computer you are using to try to get help from the internet? if not, then reformat it using the linux installer. Not that it matters -- formatting is really just a matter of overwriting the partition table.

As for installing, you can try your luck with the ubuntu alternate CD, which will give you a console installer and ask a few more questions, see if that works. Or try a Debian netinst CD -- ubuntu is just debian with a few tweaks.

This post has been edited by twist: 21 September 2008 - 05:16 AM

[twist]

misterjaytee, on Sep 20 2008, 10:41 PM, said:

Don't know if it helps, but as a damn good techie myself (blows own trumpet, no smut please ), I had trouble installing Ubuntu on an old PC a few weeks ago - it hung during install and I tried just about every trick in the book. I started with the USB Keyboard/Mouse theory and put good old PS/2 device in place, but still no joy.

If you managed to start the installation then presumably the keyboard/mouse worked to begin with? Did you try kicking the installation off then watching the error log? If something goes wrong, it will usually be reported there, and google will usually be able to tell you how to fix it.

Quote

In the end, I installed Fedora 9 instead and everything was okay - Fedora 9 is quite similar and gives a bit more flexibility than Ubuntu. My 11-year old son has got to grips with the Fedora desktop (and worryingly edited the registry last week while sorting an issue with Wine and Google Sketchup ).

I think there's an issue with Ubuntu and old hardware (particularly old VGA hardware with only 1meg (or 2) of memory on the graphics card) - if you think you're in this camp try Fedora and see if it installs.

Fedora would be okay, if it weren't for the fact that redhat's an absolute bitch to administer effectively. Debian-like distros are the future

as for "the registry" -- there isn't one. Wine has its own per user registry in the wine directory, but you can blow that away and start from scratch without breaking anything important (windows applications are not considered important on a *nix system ). *nix itself stores all configuration as plain text files under /etc, which only root should be able to write to. If anything that only root can modify is affecting wine, then either you need to add your non root account to an appropriate group, or your machine is badly configured.

if you are logged into X as root, then you are asking for trouble, and if you are using wine as root then you are really, really asking for trouble.

In case you hadn't picked up the theme yet, you should _never_ be running programs as root. Edit a sytem config file, install a package, restart a service as root by all means, but do not run as root. There is no day-to-day computing task that you can perform as root that cannot be performed by your nonroot account (including reading log files).

This post has been edited by twist: 21 September 2008 - 05:20 AM

[eki]

twist, on Sep 21 2008, 05:59 AM, said:

Er, is this the same computer you are using to try to get help from the internet? if not, then reformat it using the linux installer. Not that it matters -- formatting is really just a matter of overwriting the partition table.

As for installing, you can try your luck with the ubuntu alternate CD, which will give you a console installer and ask a few more questions, see if that works. Or try a Debian netinst CD -- ubuntu is just debian with a few tweaks.

problem is that my linux installer cd does not prompt me with anything like a menu. So I just have a pink-saumon like screen and no taskbar, no window, nothing. So I can't ask it to format the disc. I think something is already installed, because without the cd in the drawer I get the initial screen at startup to choose between XP and ubuntu (which I can't cause my keyboard is not responding). But I don't know if the complete installation is done and since I cannot choose to boot ubuntu it does not help me. So I think I will format my disk using XP and then try to boot from the cd.

If that fails I think I will try Debian or Fedora.

Thanks guys for your input.

[twist]

eki, on Sep 22 2008, 09:01 AM, said:

twist, on Sep 21 2008, 05:59 AM, said:

Er, is this the same computer you are using to try to get help from the internet? if not, then reformat it using the linux installer. Not that it matters -- formatting is really just a matter of overwriting the partition table.

As for installing, you can try your luck with the ubuntu alternate CD, which will give you a console installer and ask a few more questions, see if that works. Or try a Debian netinst CD -- ubuntu is just debian with a few tweaks.

problem is that my linux installer cd does not prompt me with anything like a menu. So I just have a pink-saumon like screen and no taskbar, no window, nothing. So I can't ask it to format the disc. I think something is already installed, because without the cd in the drawer I get the initial screen at startup to choose between XP and ubuntu (which I can't cause my keyboard is not responding). But I don't know if the complete installation is done and since I cannot choose to boot ubuntu it does not help me. So I think I will format my disk using XP and then try to boot from the cd.

If that fails I think I will try Debian or Fedora.

Thanks guys for your input.

Eh? back up a second. I thought you said the livecd didn't work? Since it's impossible to install without a working keyboard or mouse, either you were wrong, or I misunderstood you

In any case, wipe the partition table however you like -- it really makes no difference. "format c:" from a cmd prompt ought to be fine (or 'dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/dsa bs=512 count=1' from the console in ubuntu )

[eki]

twist, on Sep 22 2008, 09:18 AM, said:

Eh? back up a second. I thought you said the livecd didn't work? Since it's impossible to install without a working keyboard or mouse, either you were wrong, or I misunderstood you

In any case, wipe the partition table however you like -- it really makes no difference. "format c:" from a cmd prompt ought to be fine (or 'dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/dsa bs=512 count=1' from the console in ubuntu )

I think I was not very clear... I was logged on in XP (keyboard working fine), I put the live cd in the tray but nothing happened. I manually run an application (of the cd) called wubi which seemed to install ubuntu on my computer. I say 'seems' because it did not ask whether I want to format the disk (it just asked for a language and a user name). Then it asked for a reboot (I am still on XP at that moment). I said OK and that's where I made the first mistake because I forgot to take the cd out when it rebooted.
So when it rebooted it actually seemed to try to run ubuntu from the live cd. It hanged forever, my mouse and keyboard were not responding so I shut down the pc, restarted it without the live cd in the tray.
I then got the question which OS I want to boot (XP or ubuntu), which seems a fair question since I have not uninstalled XP and since it had supposedly successfully run the installation of ubuntu (when I was initially on XP and put the cd in). But I can't use the keyboard to choose the latter one, so it boots on the default choice which is XP. This is strange because I can use the keyboard just before that (for initial setup) and after that (once it has booted on XP) but not on that screen. So in the end it boots XP.

Out of frustration I then shut it again and tried again to boot from the live cd (knowing that there is already something installed probably) and then it hanged again (tried this many times).

So I think I am stuck with windows

[twist]

I'd probably give up on ubuntu and go with Debian, then.


then again, I don't use ubuntu anyway -- real debian on all these machines

[eki]

twist, on Sep 22 2008, 05:28 PM, said:

I'd probably give up on ubuntu and go with Debian, then.


then again, I don't use ubuntu anyway -- real debian on all these machines

OK then. Although I hate it when the damn machine gets to win..

[eki]

eki, on Sep 22 2008, 08:09 PM, said:

twist, on Sep 22 2008, 05:28 PM, said:

I'd probably give up on ubuntu and go with Debian, then.


then again, I don't use ubuntu anyway -- real debian on all these machines

OK then. Although I hate it when the damn machine gets to win..

By the way, twist, the Debian site is not what I would call user-friendly. I am trying to download the installation file but I cannot use torrent from the office laptop and then I do no tunderstand whether I have to download all iso files (1 to 21 see here)

I think you'd probably know...

[twist]

You only need the first disc. Actually, you don't even need everything on that, which is why Debian publish the netinst disc (and the business card disc). Since you have (had?) windows, you'll either want the i386 image, the IA64 image or the AMD64 image.

If in doubt, go with i386, since that will work on all three (albeit as a 32bit system only).

[eki]

twist, on Sep 24 2008, 01:47 PM, said:

You only need the first disc. Actually, you don't even need everything on that, which is why Debian publish the netinst disc (and the business card disc). Since you have (had?) windows, you'll either want the i386 image, the IA64 image or the AMD64 image.

If in doubt, go with i386, since that will work on all three (albeit as a 32bit system only).

thanks twist. I have a 32-bit cpu anyway. So I will give it a try.

[eki]

I told you I don't like it when the damned machine gets to win....

After going through all the settings of the initial pc setup I found one called something like "usb keyboard help" which was put to "disabled". As soon as I put it back to "enabled" my keyboard was responding.

WTF?

Anyway I ran through the whole ubuntu installation again (from the livecd), this time answering the questions and going through the whole process successfully. I then rebooted and logged in with my new user name.
As you imagine this was not the last of my adventures.. . before logging in I get a message because of the resolution of my screen not being "optimum" (known issue) and after logging in I don't have a taskbar and things like ALT + F2 does not give me anything. I have found some posts on ubuntuforums and I will give it a try...

I am getting there but slowly

[twist]

If you push the pointer pat the bottom of the screen you'll probably find that the viewport scrolls down to the bottom panel. Similarl, left, right and top.

You can toggle screen resolutions in X by holding down the ctrl key and pushing the + and - keys on the numeric keypad. Maybe a better option's configured (and will work), but your default is set to something insane

[eki]

twist, on Sep 29 2008, 10:37 AM, said:

If you push the pointer pat the bottom of the screen you'll probably find that the viewport scrolls down to the bottom panel. Similarl, left, right and top.

You can toggle screen resolutions in X by holding down the ctrl key and pushing the + and - keys on the numeric keypad. Maybe a better option's configured (and will work), but your default is set to something insane

yeah... I forgot to tell you that the mouse is not responding either after log on ...
and then they say windows is not a good OS....

[twist]

Well, what do the console logs says? How about the X logs?


As for windows, don't get me started. I tried installing it for someone once, and after three consecutive weekend had to admit defeat. Pretty much the only piece of hardware that worked out of the box was the keyboard. Everything else had to be fetched over the network despite the network card not working. Jumped up heap of hit OS

This post has been edited by twist: 29 September 2008 - 11:19 AM