Curse

Narada · Feb 03, 2006, 12:33 AM // 00:33

Ok, I've got a strange problem and I honestly have no idea what is going on. I realize that Linux probably isn't something widely used by the members here, but I also realize that a lot of my fellow techies are smart cookies, so I thought I'd give it a shot. Here's the situation:

I got a new box from school and planned on making it into a little *nix box, and thought I'd go with a nice easy distro like Redhat or FC, so I busted out my cd's. First I try to install Fedora Core 4, which I've had work just fine before on one of my servers.

Here's where the strange stuff comes in-- later on, I decided to make a fresh install on the server, but the GUI install started to freeze at a different points during the install. Sometimes I'd make it past the first disc, sometimes I wouldn't, it occurs at seemly random times. The only thing I did different from my original working install was configure eth0 ahead of time. Anyways, after about 10 tries at the install, I just put Debian on it (which worked flawlessly, no freezing). I figured my cd's were just scratched or something, though I could see no visual problems with them and just dismissed them.

Last night when I got out this new box to work on, I again tried to make a fresh install of FC4. About halfway into this, it froze; I repeated the install process at least 3 more times with similar results. I was a bit irked, so I decided to break out my Redhat 9 cd's. Again, the install process locked up at random times. My cd's looked fine, but I was puzzled, so I ran the Media Checker on my cd's. (Multiple times to make sure the results were correct.)

My puzzlement grew at this point when my discs gave me a series of PASS and FAIL results on the same discs. I thought to myself, "Well shit." so I went to my main box and downloaded/burned a fresh set of Redhat 9 isos, figuring there was some kind of flaw that wasn't visible. After doing so I again ran Media Checker on the discs... low and behold, the mixed PASS and FAIL results continued. Now these cd's were fresh, no scratches, no fingerprints, no error reports when burning... straight from one computer of the other.

That's where I am currently. I'm completely stumped and am wondering if maybe it's a flaw in the Redhat/Fedora Core installer, seeing as they derive from the same source. I'd really like to use either Redhat or Fedora Core on this box, but if anyone has suggestions on a nice little simple distro like those I'm willing to give them a try. Regardless, I'm still curious as to why this is happening and would be overjoyed if anyone knew why and/or how to resolve this issue.

EternalTempest · Feb 03, 2006, 12:42 AM // 00:42

Not sure on the linux front.. but you may want to check your ram to see if any of them have gone bad. I use memtest+ http://www.memtest.org/

May also want to run your hard drive disk utility (from the manufacture of your hard drive) and do 0 level format to check for any bad sectors / HD failure.

This would rule out bad hard drive / memory.