9.04: Cannot Install: ata6.0:{DRDY ERR}

[gstrock]

I'm in a bit of a pickle.
I've been running 9.04 since Alpha 1, via an upgrade from 8.10. No problems.

I just discovered that may machine has been root hacked. I noticed the last login address was not mine, ran rkhunter and it confirmed it.

I have the OS on it's own partition, so I thought I would burn the latest 9.04 install disk and just wipe out the old OS and plop in a fresh new one.

However, when I boot from the disk I see the Ubuntu splash screen with the progress bar going back and forth and then after about 30 seconds or so it barfs some error messages out to the screen that looks like this: ata6.0: Status {DRDY ERR}
and drops me in busybox.

I tried the Alternate Install CD and damn if I haven't seen this in the past, it boots up, asks me some questions about language and keyboard and then complains it can't mount the CD that it just booted off!

blame it on my cheapo ECS motherboard (AMD Dual Core 5200). I can't even remember how I got Ubuntu installed on this machine. Probably the drive was attached to another motherboard at the time.

How infuriating is this? Knoppix 6.0.1 boots up just fine. So what's up with Ubuntu?

I might have to say goodbye to Ubuntu for this combination of hardware.

Now I'm wondering if I can run the install script from the busybox prompt I get dropped into when I try to install from the 9.04 Live CD.

At this point I'm considering going back to Gentoo or one of the BSDs like OpenBSD.

any ideas besides replacing the hardware? I guess I can look at flashing the bios.

However, I'm right in the middle of trying to finish my taxes with TurboTax web version, I've go some side web programming to do, plus my regular day job, and I do have a wife that requires maintenance.
Ha Ha Ha (trying to maintain sense of humor)
Greg Strockbine

](*,)[-o<:idea:](*,)[-o<:idea:](*,)[-o<

[gstrock]

bad hardware. There was something wrong with the CD-rom drive. It dawned on me after I read the log left by one of the install disks, I can't remember now which one, complaining it couldn't mount the CD-rom.

there must have been something wrong with the CD I burned too, because after installing the core components it hung scanning the mirror. Using the alternate CD I was able to get back to a menu and installed grub.

Then I rebooted the machine up into a shell prompt, did apt-get install ubuntu-desktop and I was back in business.

in the meantime my other machine had picked up the rootkit hack, damn that thing was viral, so I had to wipe the OS partition on that machine.

At this point I discovered usb-creator, so I put the ubunutu install iso on a usb key and was able to boot the second machine using the key.

The second machine came up okay. So I did an apt-get dist-uprade and when I rebooted, I lost the GUI. X didn't even attempt to start. Looked at the log files and still couldn't figure out why. I still have to fix this one, but at least my main computer is up and running and I have ssh turned off and I plugged up my firewall ssh port. Now I only ssh into the rackspace server from my DreamHost account.

:guitar: Keep On Rocking in the Free World :guitar: