[wellylug] Mandrake 10

[Pete Black]

It's very possible your laptop has a buggy ACPI implementation - I have 
seen this on both of my AMD systems with various kernels.

You will probably be able to boot the machine by passing 'acpi=off 
noapic nolapic' arguments to the kernel - precisely how you do this in 
the mandrake installer I don't know (dropped mandrake after 9.0 or so), 
but this is the number 1 source of 'can't even boot the kernel' trouble 
I have seen.

Someone else will likely be able to tell you in more detail how to pass 
kernel args in the mandrake installer, and it is by no means the only 
possible issue, but it would be my first guess.

-Pete



>--- Steve Macdonald <smar_tarse at hotmail.com> wrote:
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>>Ok have never used this before so dont know how I go about posting questions
>>or anything.
>>    
>>
>
>You've done OK so far :-)
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>
>>I have just brought a copy of Mandrake 10 and went to install it on my laptop
>>which is an Packard Bell Easynote C3, has a athlon XP 2600 processor 512 MB
>>Ram SIS 740 Graphics adaptor and the rest of the things that come with it. I
>>have never used or installed Linux before and was told that Mandrake was the
>>best place for me to start. 
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>
>Best is debateable, but it is certainly up there :-) 
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>>Unfortunatly when I run the set up I only get as
>>far as it asking if I want to install Mandrake and hit enter the screen then
>>goes blank and does nothing after this. I tried all the advanced options for
>>setup and the same thing happens or it appears to freeze.
>>
>>What am I doing wrong or can I not install it on my machine
>>    
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>
>Details from this web site (http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/users/ab374/) give some
>hints, but suggest that on that laptop, with SiS based graphics/lan/modem you
>might have some problems with pretty much any version of Linux. It does at
>least prove that Linux can be installed & used on that Laptop.
>
>My normal approach in this sort of case is to try a LiveCD to check
>compatabilty first. My preferred one is PCLinuxOS. If this fires up OK, the
>chances are that you'll get Mandrake installed OK.
>
>Let me know if you are interested in trying a copy.
>
>There are a number of things you can try to get around the problem, but this is
>prob not the easiest thing to play with if you are not familiar with Linux.
>
>It is something you may be best off bringing to a meeting to get some help
>working through it.
>
>
>Cheers
>
>  Brent Wood
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