Linux help requested

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Posted: Thu Nov 15, 2007 2:17 pm

Since I jettisoned Vista and put XP Media Center back on my gaming machine, I've toyed w/ the idea of dual booting w/ Ubuntu. I wanted to see how the new 7.10 gutsy gibbon worked on it and got the same result as the feisty fawn version, errors.

After starting w/ the live cd, I try to get to the desktop using both the regular 1st option and the 2nd option (I think it is no VGA), but I keep getting a error

Quote:

MP-BIOS bug 8254 - timer not connected to IO-APIC

Doing some research on my own, I found two options that work for other people, 1 - go into BIOS and disable APIC which I can't do because the option is there, but greyed out and not changeable & 2 - hit F6 at the live CD grub option screen and add "NOAPIC" before the final "--" in the line. That seemed to work, but it eventually just dropped me to what I would call a DOS looking screen. I typed 'help' for available commands and tried a couple but nothing seemed to do anything.

Any ideas so I can see how Ubuntu works on this thing?

PS - I checked and the BIOS is at the latest offered by ASUS

-- System specs ---
Asus A8N-SLI Deluxe motherboard
AMD X2 3800+
2gb PC 3200 memory
Nvidia 8800GTS 640mb video card
Seagate SATA3.0 hard drive

Baiting Guru Joined: 04 Jan 2006 Posts: 3193

In the interests of a fast reply:

Try the command "startx" and tell us what error it comes up with.

Edit: also try booting with the parameter:

acpi_use_timer_override

instead of noapic

Note that is acpi and not apic.

This is from: http://lists.openwall.net/linux-kernel/2007/08/03/294

Posted: Thu Nov 15, 2007 3:21 pm

I'm stuck at work now Thud, but I'll try it when I get home.

Posted: Thu Nov 15, 2007 4:16 pm

OD- you could try the "alternate desktop cd" install instead. This may help. i have also included a link to a really good guide to installing a dual boot system.

http://users.bigpond.net.au/hermanzone/

Posted: Thu Nov 15, 2007 4:39 pm

^^ I thought about using the Alternate CD, but figured if I couldn't get a Live CD to boot up all the way, I would have problems with that as well. If I was able to use the alternate to install, am I correct in assuming that I would still get a APIC error if I choose to boot in Linux instead of XP?

And thanks for the link, it's been printed out in case I decide to go that route tonight.

Posted: Thu Nov 15, 2007 7:36 pm

OD- I don't know the answer to that one.

BUT I do know that the forum at www.ubuntuforums.org is the best forum in the world for helping out noobs with linux related questions/problems etc

Good luck!

Posted: Thu Nov 15, 2007 9:16 pm

Just went from Ubuntu to Fedora. http://fedoraproject.org/

Easy install and it recognized most of the hardware on my laptop.

they make a couple of live CD's if you want to try it out.

However you will still need to read a bit on the forums to get all of the multimedia options going.

Posted: Thu Nov 15, 2007 10:09 pm

I'll give fedora a try Stoker. I'll see if it likes my motherboard more than Ubuntu Wink

@Simba, when I tried startx, I got this:

Quote:

/bin/sh: startx: not found

Baiting Guru Joined: 04 Jan 2006 Posts: 3193

Damnit. I'll have to check tonight and see where they've hidden it. It's probably way down in /usr/lib/X11/bin or something.

Did you try the other boot parameter?

I'm on Ubuntu now because it was the only distro that understood all my hardware. Most of them threw up their hands at the site of my SATA interface, and amazingly Knoppix didn't like my video card. OTOH, Fedora was the only mainstream distro I didn't try. Annoyingly, I had paid for a new year's subscription to the Mandriva club just to download their new release. I was not a happy bunny.

Posted: Fri Nov 16, 2007 11:45 am

I did have success last night trying out the Fedora 8 KDE live cd. I watched as it loaded and I noticed the same error Ubuntu had, but it continued on past it on it's own. It must have some setting that allows it to skip it.

I'd prefer to get Ubuntu to work (because that is the one I've tried out mostly on another pc in the past) but I have nothing against using Fedora if that is the only one that will cooperate.

Posted: Fri Nov 16, 2007 12:26 pm

If you stick with the default Gnome interface you will find the two to be very similar. Using yum is very much like apt-get. Fedora has a few more apps included and the SELinux tools are worth a look.

I started using fedora because it got more of the hardware on this laptop than any of the other distros.

Trophy Videos · Posted: Fri Nov 16, 2007 3:06 pm

I've been toying with linux a bit on my HP XP machine, and Puppy Linux
is simply amazing! Found all my hardware, and booted up the first time.
It runs totally in ram, too! You can install to HD, use multisession LiveCD, or put on a flash drive. Give it a look see.

I'm a complete noobie to linux, and installing programs for it are easy.

http://www.puppylinux.com/

http://puppylinux.org/wikka/PuppyLinuxMainPage

Very Happy

Posted: Fri Nov 16, 2007 4:09 pm

Puppy Linux is very good- 100meg download, very quick, recognizes my Cisco wireless card and configures out of the box!!

Great distro for older machines with limited memory!!

Baiting Guru Joined: 04 Jan 2006 Posts: 3193

startx is in /usr/bin, (at least it is on Dapper Drake) so it should have been found OK. The only thing I can think of is that the LiveCD may be set-up differently.

Definitely try the alternate CD. I think you have two problems, one is the acpi BIOS bug and the other is to do with video drivers. The alternate CD has a different set of drivers that might get you past that.