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

[LP]

Only thing I could think of was init or systemd
I don't think older machines will work with systemd.
I could be wrong wont be the first time.

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‐‐‐‐‐‐‐ Original Message ‐‐‐‐‐‐‐
On June 16, 2018 3:41 PM, Peter <pjr at bmts.com> wrote:

> 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> 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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