Installing Mandrake 7.2

[Jock203]

I'm having a few problems installing mandrake.

I've had it for quite a while and just tried to install it again. I've tried booting it up from the CD and it crashes but I've heard some poeple have had this problem and they just booted it from ms-dos and it worked.

Problem is I can't get into ms-dos, it crashes and my system beeps twice. So I used to my systems disk to get to the command prompt. I access linux cd and go to the autoboot directory.

It tries to copy the drivers (or whatever they are) to the hard disk but for some reason it says 'insufficient space' this is really weird cause I have a 40gb hard drive and there is loads of space left on it then it asks me where the image for installation is, I'm guessing this is because of the 'insufficient space' error.

Anyone got any suggestions on why its saying 'insufficient space'.

[Edited by Jock203 on 01-05-2001 at 08:47 PM]

[aef]

I need to understand exactly where the installation process fails - is it when you try to start Linux from the CD, or do you get to select packages and then have it fail when it tries to install them? Or do you get the packages installed, and then have it fail when it tries to reboot into Linux?

ISTR reports of Mandrake bogusly complaining of insufficient disk space when installing packages - if it fails after package selection, this could be the reason. If so, try installing a really minimal system - just the base system, and perhaps X. Then install the extra stuff once it's up and running. If it still complains of insufficient space on a minimal install, try installing on a /smaller/ partition (just large enough for what you want), in case it's a arithmetic overflow problem. If all that fails, try a different distribution or a more recent Mandrake.

If it's failing at some other point in the process post again here and I'll apply more thought.

HTH

AEF

[Jock203]

I think the problem was it was trying to write to the CD or something, so I copied the whole contents to my hard drive and tried installing it from there.

This method solved that problem (I was trying to install from MS-DOS) it tried to load up the installation bit. I got the usual little penguin at the very top of the page then lots of system stuff appearing below. Lots of details about processes and virtual adresses.

Then it crashes. I posted a thread before about this crashing problem then I came to the conclusion it was a dodgy copy.