Problem making dual-boot Optiplex GX620

[Rick Stevens]

On Wed, 2006-01-11 at 14:10 -0500, Thomas Walter wrote:
> I recently received 25 Dell Optiplex GX620s with two 160GB SATA hard 
> drives (DC115 HARD DRIVE, 160G, S2, 7.2K, 8M, LEAD FREE, WD-HAWK) and 
> WinXP installed. I want to make the machines dual-boot and first tried to 
> install RHEL 3. The install did not see the hard drives. My search on the 
> web indicated spotty Linux support for SATA hard drives so I downloaded 
> RHEL 4 ES update 2 and tried to install.

The 2.4-series of Linux kernels (which is what RHEL3 is based on) has
very marginal support for SATA.  RHEL4 is based on the 2.6-series of
kernels and is much better at it, as are the Fedora Core 2, 3, and 4
releases (and they're free!).  In fact, RHEL4 is based on Fedora Core 2.

>                                             The Optiplex boots off the first 
> install CD, passes the CD media test, begins running annaconda, probes and 
> sees video card, monitor and mouse, etc but then hangs when going into X 
> leaving a white screen.

I've seen a lot of Anaconda problems regarding GUI installs.  It seems
to set up some weird video mode that some video cards don't like.

> We don't have a Redhat support contract so they're no help and the Dell 
> rep spent 10 days "researching" an answer and only referred me to a web 
> site I found in a nanosecond.

Yeah, they're a bit weak on that.  We use a TON of Dells (servers, the
1850 and 2850-series).

>                                I have to return the 25 computers by 1/13 if 
> I can't find a solution. Dell sells the Precision workstation with the 
> same 160GB SATA drives with RHEL installed so I don't know where the 
> problem might lie.

There are four installation text consoles active during a GUI install
(and a text install for that matter).  Try hitting "CTRL-ALT-F1" from
that white screen to get to the first text console.  Hit "ALT-F2" from
there to get to the second one, "ALT-F3" and "ALT-F4" to get to the
others.  Check each of those for error messages or state information
and let us know what you see.  "ALT-F7" should return you to the GUI
screen.

> Any help will, of course, be greatly appreciated.

Well, you could try installing in text mode on one of the machines.  At
the boot prompt, enter "linux text" and press ENTER.  You'll go through
a text install, but you'll still be able to set up the GUI stuff.

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- Rick Stevens, Senior Systems Engineer     rstevens at vitalstream.com -
- VitalStream, Inc.                       http://www.vitalstream.com -
-                                                                    -
-     If Bill Gates got a dime for every time Windows crashes...     -
-              ...oh, wait.  He does.  THAT explains it!             -
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