Linux question

[poprockgrrl.livejournal.com]

I've been fighting with installing Linux (redHat 7.2).
I can't get the CD to boot up. I made the boot disk on a floppy and it wouldn't boot up either. It just keeps going straight into Windows 2k.

Anyone have any tips on getting this thing to install??

Comments

[diji.livejournal.com]

Check BIOS to make sure the boot sequence has the CDROM or A drive setup as boot sources before the HDD? Sounds stupid, but that's usually it....

Re:

[poprockgrrl.livejournal.com]

The BIOS is set to boot floppy, cd and then hd.

That was the first thing I checked.

[diji.livejournal.com]

Heh. Is this a retail distro, or a burned copy? If its retail... you got me, try calling Red Hat.

If its a burned distro... it might be missing a file or something else. Hmmm... at that point, you got me.

I can't think today anyway.

Re:

[poprockgrrl.livejournal.com]

It's the retail version.

The friend who gave it to me got his to work fine after some work. I might end up having to call red hat or trying another distro

[wildkard.livejournal.com]

I've never heard of this happening before. disks created off the linux cd should boot into... well, linux. Sounds to me like it's either not booting from diskette (some computers have something silly like 'press a key to boot from disk' and then boot from the HD if you don't; look for it) or else you used the wrong cd and are actually making disks for a 2K install.

Something quick you could try is not including C: at *all* from the boot process. It will still be there and you can read what's on the screen more leasurely and can change it back right after.

[oddball42.livejournal.com]

i have spent some time tinkering with redhat before, and it comes to mind that first, set your bios to boot ONLY from the media you want to boot from, wiull make you life a little easyer. also if you have multiple cdroms, try just switching to a differnt cdrom, i had an odd moment where i wanted to boot from one drive, and the system was trying to boot from the other drive, dont know why, this is from the same MB/bios combination that is allergic to a 133 Mhz bus speed. but that would be the first stuff i do. second ccheck the floppy in a second computer, see if you can get the floppy to work in another system. i have alwyas had miserable luck whenever i relied on a floppy disc ever since i moved from a 5 and 1/4 days dont ask, you dont want to know why. third make sure you have the right boot image off the cdrom, if that dont work post in some linux forums. they will be all sorts of useful... linux is weirdly enuff the most easily internet supported os i have ever run across.