Install 12 Alpha Using USB Stick

[Adam Williamson]

On Mon, 2009-08-31 at 20:09 -0400, Robert L Cochran wrote:
> n 08/31/2009 06:55 PM, Adam Williamson wrote:
> >> So I reluctantly burned the DVD and used that to install the Alpha.
> >> Obviously, the installer isn't working right: X failed to start,
> >>      
> > Well, that doesn't mean the installer's broken. It could mean X is
> > broken. :) What's your hardware?
> >    
> 
> Hi Adam!
> 
> You are quite right. I'm installing on a Dell Latitude E6400 laptop with 
> an Nvidia card:
> 
> 01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation Quadro NVS 160M 
> (rev a1) (prog-if 00 [VGA controller])
>      Subsystem: Dell Device 0233
>      Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 11
>      Memory at f5000000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable)
>      Memory at e0000000 (64-bit, prefetchable)
>      Memory at f2000000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable)
>      I/O ports at df00
>      Capabilities: <access denied>
>      Kernel modules: nouveau
> 
> This baby is normally docked to a Dell docking station, and is connected 
> to a 24" Dell 2407WFP, LCD monitor. I use the wide monitor for all my 
> work and pretty much ignore the laptop's monitor.

Let's try playing with X, then.

Try booting with the docking station disconnected (dealing with multiple
monitors is more complex for the driver, and there have been cases where
it works with one monitor but not two). Also / otherwise, try booting
with the kernel parameter 'nouveau.modeset=0' . Worst case is to use the
'basic graphics' option of the installer, also with kernel parameter
'nouveau.modeset=0'. If none of that gets it going, we're in trouble!

> > Well, kernel 2.6.31 hasn't actually been released yet, in all fairness.
> > We're shipping pre-release versions of it in Rawhide. I wouldn't expect
> > any 'stable' distro to ship a pre-release kernel (though hey, we did it
> > in Mandriva more than once...)
> >
> >    
> True, true, and I have no experience with how often the Arch people 
> release their kernels and other package updates. I realize I should make 
> some effort to be really fair with them. A lot of my amazing fairness 
> sort flew away when I cruised over to the Arch site yesterday and found 
> it was down! Down, just when I needed to install X and wanted 
> authoritative how-to documentation! 

They DID have a very cute 'server is down' message, though :)

> The fedoraproject.org website never 
> has been...at least it's never gone down just when I needed it. And I 
> needed the Arch site yesterday. It's up and running now. Score points 
> for Fedora: development kernels and documentation, too! On the good 
> side, I did manage to get X installed on Arch by following directions 
> that someone posted to a non-Arch website. It looks like a sick sloth, 
> but it works. Now that I've done my ration of whining for one Alpha, 
> I'll try to be fair all around...

Again trying to be scrupulously fair, Fedora does have the advantage of
considerable resources provided by Red Hat. It's a lot harder for Arch
to get properly enterprise-class and redundant hardware on which to run
its services, I suspect.

-- 
Adam Williamson
Fedora QA Community Monkey
IRC: adamw | Fedora Talk: adamwill AT fedoraproject DOT org
http://www.happyassassin.net