[Bglug] Dell Precision 380 - now boots into (some versions of) Linux

Sat Jun 16 15:41:12 EDT 2018

Weird!

I got 17.3 Mint rosa installed on ide so I can choose 17.3; but Ubuntu 
18.04 and Lubuntu 18.04 don't boot from cd.

I put the dvd (recently downloaded version so after the official release 
date) and checked it sha256 - OK; ran the memory diagnostic - OK.

I get a funny little logo at the bottom of a mauve screen and then the 
screen goes black.

After some time, (and sounds like the dvd is looping) I hit Esc and get 
some text on the screen:

    44.024034 ata1.01 : exception Emask 0x0 soct 0x0 Serr 0x0 action 0x6
    frozen

    44.21031 ata1.01: a0/1:00 (followed by more similar numbers)

    44.24103 Read(10)28 00 00 23 (and more such)  Emask 0x4 (timeout)

    44.24204 ata1.01: status {DRDY}

If I wait some more, I get a repetition of the above preceded by 82. ... 
instead of 44.

And after another wait I get another repetition at 117. I then power off 
the computer. I had to write down the above, obviously, so there may be 
mistakes in it, but you get the gist. I don't know what it all means. 
Does anyone else?

Peter Richards

Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the the universe. -  Albert Einstein

On 2018-06-14 12:19 PM, Chris Clark wrote:
> Peter,
> Sounds Like Fun, reminds me of installing PCLinuxOS the first time.
> I was thinking I might have to install with another machine and move 
> the HDD over 1 at a time.
> _*Will it boot to pxe ???*_
> Thanks !!
>
> On Mon, Jun 11, 2018 at 9:04 PM, Peter <pjr at bmts.com 
> <mailto:pjr at bmts.com>> wrote:
>
>     Hello Chris:
>
>     I got Linux Mint Maya installed and booting - finally.
>
>     The box I borrowed from STARS has a SATA (Samsung SP0411C/R, sda,
>     40 HB SATA, 7200 rpm, D0 in BIOS) as well as 2 IDE ( ST3082110A,
>     80 GB, IDE D4 in BIOS, and a cd/dvd drive) drives and a 3.5 inch
>     diskette drive. One site in my research said that Dell shipped the
>     IDE drives jumpered as Cable Select but their installations only
>     worked if they were jumpered as Master & Slave. I did not change
>     anything here and I don't know how mine were jumpered. The Dell
>     Precision 380 dates somewhere on or after 2006 but is a nice
>     machine, nonetheless.
>
>     The 3.5 inch always showed its light on. I tried the ancient thing
>     of turning the connector over (in the days before keyed
>     connectors, having the drive light always on was a sign it was on
>     backwards) - no change, so I unplugged it and turned it OFF in the
>     BIOS. And I don't have any diskettes to try in it, anyway.
>
>     The box was not happy if the SATA drive was disconnected and would
>     not boot.
>
>     UNETBOOTIN on a USB stick did not work.
>
>     I put the Maya cd in the drive and changed the boot order in BIOS
>     and it booted OK. Then I installed Linux. All appeared to go well,
>     but it would not boot. I tried a System Rescue Disk and a Knoppix
>     disk and I could see all the Linux files were on the SATA drive,
>     sda. But no boot. Tried the update-grub (I can never remember if
>     it's update-grub or grub-update!) but it complained that I was
>     attempting to change a read-only file several tries and an error
>     message which I've forgotten. Othere people reported similar
>     messages. Several times it appeared to be booting and stopped;
>     hitting ctrl-esc showed the last activity was starting the cups
>     printing server. Tried the Boot Repair disk - it reported success
>     and finished, but no boot. Note, for the installation of Maya, I
>     did the manual ('something else') install and partitioned the
>     drive as 100 MB for /boot, 10 GB for /, 5 GB for swap area, and
>     the rest as /home. This is my usual process so I can change the OS
>     version and not lose my /home files. But I still make a backup
>     just in case when I upgrade even though I've never had to use it.
>
>     So, I went back to square one, as they say. Put the Maya cd in and
>     ran the live version. I deleted the existing partition table and
>     created a new one using GPARTED. Then I installed Maya again. This
>     time I told it to erase the disk and take it all for the
>     installation, except it wanted a swap area, so I gave it 5 GB for
>     that. Installation went OK as before. Then, wonders never cease,
>     it rebooted after I restarted it (soft one, ie no power off). Then
>     I did the update. Many new files, including LibreOffice - is that
>     normal? Shutdown (hard, power off) and reboot. Success! Repeated
>     the shutdown/restart several times OK.
>
>     In summary: I turned off the diskette drive, made sure the SATA
>     drive and the IDEs were plugged in, tried several times with the
>     cd boot process and did not pre-partition the drive but let Maya
>     take it over.
>
>     If I do it again, I might try putting /home on the IDE drive, but
>     that will come much later, if at all. Also, I might try Ubuntu 18,
>     just for giggles.
>
>     Peter Richards
>
>     -- 
>     Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm
>     not sure about the the universe. - Albert Einstein
>
>
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