Horrible problems trying to run Linux on my hardware

xyzzy at hotpop.com xyzzy at hotpop.com
Tue Feb 3 14:44:46 UTC 2004


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Greetings,

Hardware:
ASUS motherboard with 82801EB Intel chipset (865G video, 82562EZ LAN), 
Hyperthread support, Enhanced P-ATA/S-ATA, USB 2.0.
1 GB ram
Intel Pentium 4 2.4 GHz
3 harddisks, first one is the boot disk using Windows XP Pro (with dual boot 
off of the third disk for Linux using XP boot manager) UDMA 2, the other two 
are UDMA 5, the last disk being for Linux with /, /boot, /var and swap 
partitions).
LG DVD/CD-RW combo
Adaptec SCSI 2930 PCI card

This machine runs XP Pro just fine, absolutely no problems and at very 
acceptable speeds.

I can't even boot, most of the time, off of the Redhat 9 CDs that I burned 
from ISO (and have been used to install on other machines, so the medium is 
fine), unless I cancel the Enhanced IDE and use Compatible mode in the BIOS.  
Also, with Redhat 9, I must keep this configuration in order to boot Linux at 
all, it hangs on the IDE enumeration.  I managed to get an entire Redhat 9 
system installed and up and running but SLOOOOOW, running X and trying to 
paste a very long command line into a terminal prompt using the center button 
took up to a minute to complete pasting, not to mention not being to use the 
cursor keys to navigate the line.

Figuring that Fedora with the 2.4.22 kernel would be better with more support 
for S-ATA, enhanced IDE, and hyperthread, I upgraded my system with the 
Fedora Core 1 CDs burned from ISO.  These booted just fine using the Enhanced 
IDE configuration but still very slow.

I managed to upgrade the system using the Internet until everything was at "0 
updates needed".  It was still VERY slow and I had a few times where the 
system froze completely, necessitating a press of the reset button.

So, I downloaded the Intel graphics and network drivers from the Intel site, 
figuring that the stock drivers were somehow bogging down because of my newer 
hardware.

The network driver compiled and installed fine.  When I installed the graphics 
driver according to Intel's instructions (changing the Device "Driver" field 
form i810 to i830), trying to restart the X server failed with a segmentation 
fault and a notice that the agpport module could not allocate memory; a 
patently ridiculous since I had over 924MB free according to /proc/meminfo.

Trying restore the old settings fails and the X server refuses to start.

Any help would be appreciated on what to do next to get X back up.  I am about 
to give up on Linux on this box unless I can figure out why it is so slow, 
that is, assuming I can get around this frustrating X failure.  Is it time 
for a complete OS re-install?  I can still run text mode.  What a drag.

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