A7N8X Deluxe won't install Suse 8.2, help please?

[forevrnite]

I'm trying to install Suse 8.2 and have downloaded the install ISO from two different sites and burned it at 2 different speeds using Nero but I can't get the thing to install. First it will only boot from my CD-RW and not my DVD-ROM, then when selecting any of the 3 install options from the boot manager, all I get is a black screen, not an off monitor, a black screen. Can anyone help here? System specs follow...................

Asus A7N8X Deluxe (NForce 2) motherboard
AMD XP2600
1gig RAM
20Gig Maxtor HD with 3 gigs unpartitioned space for Linux
2 80Gig striped WD drives on a Promise TX2 IDE RAID controller
Audigy2
MSI Geforce FX5800 Ultra

I don't know if any of my hardware could be causing a conflict or something. Anybody have ideas? Thanks

Charles

[Buzzard]

Just posted this in your other thread.

I got a black screen when I tried to install Mandrake 9.1. I got around it by hitting F1 instead of Enter when it asked to install. I then had to type "linux mem=128M" and that got it going. (I have 1.5GB or RAM in my system.) Don't know if Suse has anything similar.

Hope that helps.

[leibold]

1 GB of RAM for the SuSE 8.2 install is fine (that's what I have in mine). It's more likely a problem with the video card. Isn't the FX5800 one of those with multiple video channels ? Perhaps the output appears on the wrong one (not the one were your monitor is attached).
On the Radeon 7500 that I had in the system at install time the same picture appeared on both the VGA and the DVI output.

[forevrnite]

Hmmm, that's interesting I'll have to whip out the included DVI-VGA adapter and see what I get on the other connector. It seems weird though if it flopped the output to the other connector. I wonder if that is the case that if there is a way to switch it back to the VGA connector at some point? Would be a pain to swap connectors every time I need to boot into Linux. Either way it still doesn't explain the CD booting issue. I found I had an old set of Mandrake 9.0 CD's here and they booted just fine off of the DVD-ROM.........and I've never tried that on this motherboard/hardware setup.

[Buzzard]

Originally posted by leibold
1 GB of RAM for the SuSE 8.2 install is fine (that's what I have in mine). It's more likely a problem with the video card. Isn't the FX5800 one of those with multiple video channels ? Perhaps the output appears on the wrong one (not the one were your monitor is attached).
On the Radeon 7500 that I had in the system at install time the same picture appeared on both the VGA and the DVI output.

I use a Radeon 9700 Pro, and haven't experienced any problems with it, yet. Even after Drake installed, and booted to the LILO boot screen, it wouldn't boot unless I selected the Linux FSA (? I think it said FSA...) option. By adding that line (linux mem=128M), I could select Linux from LILO choices and boot normally. The symptom I would get was a black screen, with the Caps Lock and Scroll Lock lights on the keybd flashing.

I'm still very much a Linux Newb, so forgive me if my answer seems vague. I could find where I added that line if you want to try it.

[forevrnite]

Well, I think I'm going to be trying Debian. Suse is not going to work for me as near as I can tell. I can get the installer to come up in either manual install/text mode or install wizard with ACPI disabled/in text mode again. It doesn't seem to like graphical interface. The problem is that with Suse all you get is an 18MB boot ISO that does an install over FTP, but it doesn't seem to have drivers for either of the A7N8X Deluxe's NIC's so of course I can't connect to the Internet to complete the install.

[Buzzard]

That sucks. Have you thought about Mandrake? I haven't had any trouble with it yet.

[Cigarman]

has anyone gotten the nvidia installer program to work under suse 8.2? I downloaded it and it says that it wants a 2.4.20-4GB kernel when the one that is installed by default on my Athlon is 2.4.20-4GB-athlon. weird eh? Very distressing since their readme says 8.2 is supported. This was the downloaded version of 8.2 that was on their mirrors and it sucked down 4gb or so of disk space. Hate to waste all that space for a bum install. Any ideas?

[leibold]

I have not done the ftp install (I bought the upgrade package and installed from DVD), so I don't know what (if any) differences are caused by the ftp install. The boot-image (in theory at least) should be the same as the one on the DVD and that includes the 3Com NIC driver. As long as you select acpi=off the 3Com NIC will work. The SuSE installer correctly detects both NICs, but of course the nvnet driver needs to be downloaded separately from nvidia.

Cigarman: The nvidia installer recognizes all of the SuSE 8.2 kernels, including the athlon kernel and installs the GRAPHICS driver for nvidia video cards. For the nvnet module you need to download the SuSE 8.2 RPM from the nvidia website. I'm running the 2.4.20-4GB-athlon kernel and the 0256 rpm installed just fine.

[forevrnite]

Hmm, it didn't detect some info file and switched to manual install mode when I used the downloaded boot iso for the ftp install. I was able to select a NIC driver manually but couldn't figure out what to select because nothing matched the model numbers in the Asus manual for the two NIC's. Anyway, I'm finishing up a download of Debian right now and have printed out the install pages from the Debian site so I'm gonna be brave (or is that insane lol) and try to install it. If all fails I'll try Redhat and then if that doesn't work for whatever, I'll maybe go buy the retail box of Suse since you say that works.

[forevrnite]

woops hit the back button and reposted

[leibold]

Originally posted by forevrnite
Hmm, it didn't detect some info file and switched to manual install mode when I used the downloaded boot iso for the ftp install.

The info files it looks for are those created by a previous install on the same system (e.g. an upgrade from an earlier version of SuSE or restarting an aborted installation). It is perfectly normal for those not to be found on the first install :-)
Manual mode should only happen if there is insufficient memory or no supported VESA video mode in order to do the graphical install.

For the 2NICs on the A7N8X deluxe, the one closest to mouse and keyboard connector is the 3Com 3C920B-EMB (embedded) and the one between all the sound connections is the nvidia nforce2 NIC.
For the 3Com NIC I used a patched 3c90x driver in SuSE 8.1. In SuSE 8.2 it's autodetected with the 3c59x driver.
For the nforce NIC you need the nvnet driver from nvidia.
Good luck with Debian.