FC6 install does not recognize the CD/DVD it successfully booted from

Frode Petersen fropeter at online.no
Sat May 5 18:25:21 UTC 2007


Hello again.
I asked about this a while back, but thought a bad burn was to blame. 
Now I'm not so shure and need help in finding a solution to this strange 
problem.

First, the relevant hardware:
Asus A8N-SLI Premium mb (socket939, nForce4 SLI), 2GB ram, 2 sata HD 
sda/sdb, NEC nd-3550a IDE DVD burner (IDE master, ch1)

I have downloaded FC-6-x86_64-boot.iso (CD image for internet install) 
and FC-6-x86_64-DVD.iso (DVD image for normal install), and burnt them 
on corresponding media using Brasero. I have also tried GnomeBaker on 
the DVD.

The procedure:
1. Boot from the CD or the DVD. Results are identical for both.
2. Type "linux askmethod" or "linux rescue". (Same result)
2. Choose language, keyboard and install type 'Local CD-ROM'
3. The DVD-player ejects the disk and FC install complains:
	"The Fedora Core CD was not found in any of
	 your CDROM drives. Please insert the Fedora
	 Core CD and press OK to retry."

There is a way around this if there is an image file on an accessible 
partition:
4. Go back one step, choose install from local harddisk, enter directory 
where the image file is, press OK.

 From here the install/rescue works as normal, so the image files 
themselves are OK.

I have compared the checksums of each file in the FC-6-x86_64-boot.iso 
to the ones on the CD, like this:

	mount -t iso9660 <path>FC-6-x86_64-boot.iso /media/test/ -o loop
	md5sum {Fedora\ Core,test}/*
	md5sum {Fedora\ Core,test}/isolinux/*

The checksums are identical, so the files themselves are OK. I have no 
reason to think that the result would be different for the dvd, but I 
haven't checked. The failure is identical, and if I'm correct, the files 
  common in both isos are the ones that would be needed to get past that 
point.

I have also tried watching a DVD movie, and that worked. (Mplayer 
worked, Totem didn't)

Possible causes: (?) (In random order)

- Timeout of media mount during install to short. This would indicate a 
drive on the brink of collapse. Is there a way to increase such a 
timeout just to check?

- I have seen someone mentioning that the bios is used for the initial 
mount (pre entering 'linux' to start install) and that linux later uses 
it's own driver to mount later. Does this change occur at the point in 
the procedure where it fails? If so, how do I diagnose whether this is a 
driver failure?

- Burning the isos resulted in some kind of error in the media metadata 
(for lack of a better term). Maybe some bit or byte or label unrelated 
to the files should be set to a certain value, and it wasn't?

I have googled and googled, without coming closer to a solution. I have 
cleaned the drive's lens. I have seen reports of the exact same failure, 
but in intel based systems. (AFAIK the solutions were intel specific)
I tried the option 'all-generic-ide' when booting, but I might have made 
an error in doing so: What is the correct way of specifying such a boot 
option? (IIRC I wrote: linux all-generic-ide rescue) Isn't that option 
intel specific?

At this point, all I can say is

Help....

Frode




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