can't install linux


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I want to install Fedora 9 for a research app that runs on linux and my PC has a 8700/8800 GT with a DVI output.

After booting from the CD and proceeding to install my monitor gets a "cannot display this mode" and nothing is shown on the screen.

Is it a driver issue? How can I fix it?

Is there another distro that is compatible with my hardware? I need a linux with kernel 2.6.25.9 or something close to that.

Thanks

!

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Firstly, you might want to use the combination of:

Ctrl-Alt- +/- (plus or minus on the number pad). This will change your resolution to something that your monitor should be able to use. Then you can see if there is a more suitable setting for you.

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Where did it put the GRUB MBR info?

It defaults to your boot drive, but allows you to select an alternate location (like first sector of your Linux partition - and that is not the correct location for most installs).

But it looks like you have part of your boot information there, but not all of it.

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the drive I installed it to was sata "sde"

I have vista on the Intel chipset raid but I am using the asus bios menu to boot directly to my seperate 80gb WD drive which is where I installed Fedora.

Its been a while since I've installed linux and just need to get this running for a project presentation on Tuesday. So please let me know what is my best option..

I actually managed to get to the grub.conf

How do I know/view which hd to point to and which device name?

Right now it is pointing to /dev/sde1 and the install on hd2,0

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I just tried disabling the raid in BIOS and edited grub.conf so that it points to sda and hd0,0

I did this after running geometry(hd0) and found out that the linux paritions were in here.

However I still get the stupid blinking cursor. I f**king hate GRUB and this is why linux continues to **** me off.

I still need to get this app up and running for my research so if you guys have any ideas please help!!

Thanks!

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GRUB is very capable. More so than the Microsoft boot loader. GRUB allows interruption of boot and issuing direct commands. Your problem isn't with GRUB, it is with your particular install.

So you use RAID? This is important information. That can cause problems based on the differences in how Windows and Linux will identify the drives.

At this point, I would recommend one of two things: Boot a LiveCD, and post the output of fdisk -l (that's a lowercase letter "L", not the number 1) as root.

or

Boot your Microsoft CD, and boot into the recovery console and issue a fixmbr to restore the Microsoft default and we can look carefully (now that we know RAID is involved) and plan the install better.

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Mark,

I ran fdisk -l and

disk /dev/sda seems to be my linux directory.

/dev/sda1 is boot directory, id 83 and file system is Linux

/dev/sda2 is id 8e file system "Linux LVM"

I do have raid 1 but I disabled it in bios so that I can have this thing running for now.

Will it work ok if I have that disabled? I don't need vista for now.

for my grub config

boot = /dev/sda1

root (hd0,0)

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I'm not that familiar with LVM.

But if sda1 is your /boot, then you are correct in setting root(hd0,0).

And it is not working like that?

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ok now grub works and I boot into Fedoras intro screen.

Things looked ok untill it gets to the part about sending the hardware profile.

I tried the option to send and hit finish but the screen goes blank and I don't hear any drive activity.

I restarted and did the steps again (create user.. blah blah), chose do not send hardware profile but then then the screen went blank again.

Now everytime it starts the screen freezes and all you see is the mouse coursor.

When I hit ctrl+shift+f1 or other f keys I can't get to the terminal. So I think it is freezing up and has something to do with the display. Linux has always given me problems with the display setup in x.

I tried adding apci=off noapci but it still freezes on the mouse cursor

Any suggestions on what to do here Mark or others?

Edited by Cube
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Out of curiosity, you are currently only connected via DVI? Could you connect via VGA and see if that is working?

Other than that I would recommend trying Ubuntu or such, to see if this is a Fedora-specific problem or not. Also, maybe Fedora 10 instead of 9, since 10 is out (unless you are requiring Fedora 9 for some reason).

I wish I had more helpful advice... :unsure:

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my display card has 2 dvi outputs.

I managed to hose my vista install in the process... what a stupid and frustrating day.

I tried everything to rebuild the boot block for Vista but I think my raid 1 table is fubar.

Reinstalling vista in another drive and will have to try to recover my data.

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