From Bugzilla Helper: User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.1) Gecko/20020826 Description of problem: I have a digital celebris gl 6180, which is a pentium pro 180mhz system. It has 96mb of ram, and is currently running win 98se, win 2000 pro, and win xp pro. I have successfully installed 7.3 on it (except the network card didn't work). I tried to install 8.0. The cd hung during booting with the error: Isolinux 1.75 2002-06-14 isolinux: Loading spec packet failed, trying to wing it.... isolinux: Found something at drive = 9F isolinux: Looks like it might be right, continuing... isolinux: Inage checksum error, sorry... Boot failed: press a key to retry I know the cd is ok, because I successfully installed 8.0 on a different machine. I know the computer is ok, because I successfully booted from the 7.3 cd right after that. I then tried a boot floppy. I got the following: Loading vmlinux... Boot failed: please change disks and press a key to continue I therefore conclude that the 8.0 cd 1 has a problem with some computers. I also conclude that the 8.0 boot.img floppy has a similar problem with some computers. Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): How reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: 1. See description 2. 3. Actual Results: I cannot boot from 8.0 cd or floppy. I can boot from 7.3 cd. I can boot from 8.0 cd on a different machine. The digital celebris machine is ok, as it is currently running windows 98 se, windows 2000 pro, and windows xp pro. Expected Results: I should be able to install 8.0 Additional info: I have 3 of these machines, and I would like to build a mini-beowulf cluster with them, so please fix the problem.
Well - if you conclude that the CDs are prim-and-proper, I would attempt to replace the CD-ROM drive with one that you know works well. That would isolate the fault to the discs themselves, the CD-ROM drive, or the hardware controller for the drive.
I have tested the cd rom drive under windows 2000, and it works perfectly. I can successfully boot with the rh 7.3 cd. And I cannot boot with the rh8.0 boot floppy. Therefore, I conclude the problem has nothing to do with the cd rom drive. I think some changes were made between 7.3 and 8.0 which prevents this computer from booting. On a different computer, I used the rh8.0 cds to successfully install yesterday, so I know the cds are ok.
This is a BIOS bug in that it doesn't properly implement the spec necessary to handle El Torito hard drive image booting.
Is this BIOS bug also responsible for the floppy image not booting? Why can I boot with a redhat 7.3 install cd?
Why does windows 98, 2000, and xp boot disks work? If microsoft can deal with this 'bios bug', why can't redhat?
Does the recent beta (Phoebe) work better?
No. It tries to boot and says: ISO Linux 2.00 2002-10-25 isolinux: loading spec packet failed, trying to wing it Found something at drive=9F looks like it might be right, continuing Image checksum error, sorry I verified the md5 check sum was correct.
This error comes only if the BIOS improperly reads sectors off the CD when trying to read the boot sector As for your earlier floppy failures, those look like failing floppy or drive problems because it started to load the kernel and then failed partway through.
I just tested my system again. It boots fine from the 7.3 cd. So the BIOS knows how to read the rh7.3 cd. It also boots fine from all windows cd's including windows 98 and windows 2000. So the BIOS also knows how to read these cd's. The floppy drive works fine also, because I have booted other operating systems with the fd. Today I booted from floppy mandrake 8.1 as well as openbsd 3.1 . So I really think the problem lies with red hat 8.0, not my hardware. Since I have problems with the 8.0 cd (which is known good as I installed it on two different machines), as well as the phoebe cd, I don't think there is a flaw on my cd's. jeff deifik
7.3 uses a floppy-emulation based method of booting. 8.0 later uses hard drive emulation. Both of these are covered and required for proper adherance to the El Torito spec for bootable CDs. The fact that things that use floppy emulation boot fine doesn't mean that your BIOS isn't buggy.