Fresh install problems - freezing on format / copying files

[apieroux]

Hi

I sort of got there eventually by installing Ubuntu 7 Gutsy - couldnt get HH to install at all with either disk.

7 installed from the alternative, with a lot of fiddling on the video settings. By this stage I'd blown away my windows installation.

I also more or less managed to get to 8 by upgrading from 7

I spent a couple of weeks tweaking it and trying to learn Linux's nuances. Had a number of restarts required and a lot of problems with the inbuilt nVidia graphics card and my PCMCIA wireless card (especially in 8).

In the end, I gave up and went back to Windows.

There was a lot I liked about Kubuntu - I love the concept of open source, but for me the apps (even compared to free Windows apps) weren't quite there. Call me old fashioned but I prefer iTunes to any of the Ubuntu equivalents. I use Firefox, VLC and some web apps quite happily and that gets me by. I use Picasa for photos.

I'm glad I looked at Ubuntu, but it made me realise that for what I want to do, I prefer the stability of Windows XP and the ability to work with my current hardware. Maybe in the future...?

Hope this helps explain a little, and sorry its not more use.

Thanks

Andy

[kaotiK0c]

Not sure if this is progress, but finally got an error message.
[789.361107] Kernel panic - not syncing: Fatal exception in interrupt.

Same install as always except that I turned off the debian-installer framebuffer. So maybe this wasn't a good idea.

BTW: This was roughly at the 23% "Installing Software Packages" mark

[AtomicSpark]

I came across this while trying to salvage an old laptop. Happened to be the model in question. Pressing F6 and then using the boot option of "noapci" before the install, seemed to fix the problem. Hope that helps some of you!

Update: I spoke too soon. At least I got past creating the main user this time. I'll update this if I ever figure it out. More boot options here we come...

[karachuonyo]

I'm having the same problem except my laptop is acer 1310 and ironically was happily chugging along with kubuntu 7.04 before i succumbed to the bling of ubuntu 8.04.

[da_norf]

Hi, there !

I want to write here, cause I have the same computer : Sony PCG-FR102 but in a french flavour (as, basically, I'm French)(nobody's perfect...)
I use another Linux distro (Fedora) but I think I have (perhaps) the same problem you have : "pseudo-random" freeze.
For me the problem appeared after I had installed Fedora 7 (and is still there with Fedora 8 and 9). With previous distro (Fedora Core 6, 5, 4) I never had such freezes.

As far as I can see (and say), the computer freezes when on heavy disk (or CD-Rom) access and trying to make another bus access (mouse, display, ...). The heavy disk access is likely a constant when computer freeze but is not suffisant to make it freeze.

For exemple :
-Playing a CD without graphical visualization never freezes the computer but enabling graphical visualization makes the pc unstable.
-Opening Firefox (or any other app) when updating packages can make the pc freeze.
-Installing Fedora 7, 8 or 9 from CDs/DVDs either in graphical or non graphical mode freeze before the end
-Ripping music from any audio-CD freeze before the end.

... and so on...

I first thought that it was a problem with the kernel ide drivers used in Fedora : in this distro, "pata_via" has replaced "VIA_IDE" since F7. But I can't manage to make tests. Furthermore Ubuntu still uses VIA_IDE and you seem to have the same "freeze" problem.

Another possibility is that it could be a problem with the Apollo KT266/A/333 as this chipset was known to produce similar freeze on various OS a couple of years ago : see "PCI Latency" patch for VIA chipsets" section on this page or this one

I actualy never solved this problem myself (since more than 1 year) in any other way than "doing only one thing at a time on my laptop and live with some few remaining freezes" as I don't have suffisant technical skills to go further and untill this day I have felt myself a little bit alone on this problem...

But if we really have the same bug, if this bug is hardware related and cross-distro, this could be a good opportunity to get definitively rid of it.

Regards.

[Aleksey1977]

Has anyone submitted a bug for this issue? If not, I'll do it, after a few more tests.

[Aleksey1977]

The freeze also occurs for me in Intrepid Alpha 3.

I have submitted a bug report for the issue at https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+s...ty/+bug/253321

[kaotiK0c]

The freeze also occurs for me in Intrepid Alpha 3.

I have submitted a bug report for the issue at https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+s...ty/+bug/253321

Thanks Aleksey, still having the problem here. I have tried every suggestion I can find with all the flavors and types of install of Ubuntu I can find. The one thing I have yet to try and is next on the list is installing a v7 distro. Hope someone take notice of the bug and fixes so we can use v8.

Cheers all!

[karachuonyo]

I think da_norf (no need to apologise being french, it's not your fault ) may have something here. My mobo uses the KT 266 chipset and I experienced the same problem. Still does not explain why I never had any problem installing all the other Ubuntu versions except 8.04.
And in case someone still has the problem, just download and install Ubuntu 7.10 then do a distribution version upgrade. Works a treat if you have fast internet connection.

[da_norf]

I think da_norf (no need to apologise being french, it's not your fault ) may have something here. My mobo uses the KT 266 chipset and I experienced the same problem. Still does not explain why I never had any problem installing all the other Ubuntu versions except 8.04.
And in case someone still has the problem, just download and install Ubuntu 7.10 then do a distribution version upgrade. Works a treat if you have fast internet connection.

Hello everybody,

In fact, to be french is not a mistake as big as to think that Ubuntu v8.04 still uses VIA_IDE. In fact, since v8.04 (Hardy Heron), Ubuntu, as Fedora since v7, uses libata with pata_via module to handle disks accesses on VIA based plateform (like my Sony PCG-FR102).

So, for me, our problem definitively seems to be a compatibility problem between the pata_via module and some VIA chipsets (more reasonably the "southbridge" one than the "northbridge" one (as written in my first message)).

I've found this bug report which seems to lead to a workaround for Ubuntu 8.04. Perhaps, it's worth a try... (but it doesn't definitively solve the problem on Ubuntu nor on other distros).