I recently installed Redhat Linux 9. After the installation it was going to boot up Redhat for the first time. The computer restarted and the startup process began. Then it came to mounting filesystem in read-write mode. It sat like that for hours, the hard drive indicator lit the whole time (though I heard no disk movement). So I left it overnight, in the morning it was still there. So I hit the reset button, and it started loading again. It got to checking filesystem, and the hard drive light lit and it now here it sits the same as last night. What is wrong?

I have done the following:
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Reinstalled exactly the same as I did last time, mounting filesystem in read-write mode - Hang!

Reset computer, checking filesystem - Hang!!

Reinstalled with the auto setup partitions then added one of my own, mounting filesystem in read-write mode - Hang!!!

Reset computer, checking filesystem - Hang!!!!

Reinstalled with the autosetup partitions and added nothing of my own, this time it went right to checking filesystem - Hang!!!!!

Reset computer, checking filesystem - Hang!!!!!!

Any ideas?

Update
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I reinstalled RH9 yet again with all default settings, mounting root filesystem in read-write mode - Hang!!!!!!

Installed it again with a different secondary swap hard drive, mounting root filesystem in read-write mode - Hang!!!!!!!

Installed it once more this time telling RH9 to completely ignore the secondary hard drive, started right up.

24 hours-of-constant-formatting-and-reinstalling later I finally got Redhat 9 running. Just as a pointless fact-I could have installed windows98 48 times in this amount of time and it would be working immediatly after I got it installed, no configuring. Which brings me to my next point - Since RH9 didn't detect and install my 3com 509b network card, a very common card that BTW redhat.com specifically says is supported, how do I install that and make it recieve internet connection sharing?

*hears crickets*
Hello? Is anyone in here?
*gets an echo back*
Don't worry I didn't come here with very high hopes of getting help or anything, this is more of a project log... uh yeah...
*more crickets*
sigh...

New super fun update
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Since redhat linux took 1.3 GIGS! I decided to put in another hard drive to put stuff on (Im dealing with fairly small hard drives here folks). After putting in the new hard drive linux begins to load... then... all of the sudden... mounting root filesystem in read-write mode - HANG!!!!!!!!!!!!@#$!~@

I was really beginning to miss the hang. It's kinda refreshing really.

So I powered down the system and took out the drive to make linux run again.

In windows I could just add a drive anytime I wanted, oh well.

New update!
-----------

I am now much happier! After I removed the hard drive I started the computer again, and it magically came up with kudzu the magical harware detection program thingy. Aparently when I attempted to setup my network card in linux I triggered the starting of kudzu the great. Upon logging on frantically I opened Mozilla and there was an internet connection! Something works! Linux was able to use the connection that my winXP machine broadcasts. Thats right folks I'm actually posting from within linux! Yay!

Now on to more important things like getting my soundcard to work.

And let's not forget that I still would like to install a hard drive.

In windows these things would be trivial, but in linux every problem is a new adventure!!!

Stay tuned!

Welcome Back!
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In a random act of desperation I formatted the drive fat32 and tried to load the system, guess what? Checking filesystem - Hang!

I can't even imagine what the correct procedure for this is... Maybey I have to have no partitions on the drive at all. Do any of YOU know?

*waits for response*
Hmm, deserted, I thought so.

Anyway I need rest or linux will certainly kill me.
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Tomorrow's episode - "Installing a second hard drive for space, is it possible? - Part II"

And later - "Can you install a sound card?"

up and back down again
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I attempted to get the hard drive working today. Following some instructions that were given to me by another forum (one with people) I formatted the drive and then edited some fstab file and tried to "mount" the drive. After doing that, linux froze because it is so stable. When I restarted Linux attempted to mount my new drive and, Hang!!!!!

So I removed the drive and now linux will only boot so far and it dumps me to a console to "repair" it. So now what do I do?

Anyone? Anyone?
What do I have to do?
Anyone? Anyone?
Bueller? Bueller?

I assume I need to remove that entry to fstab but I have no idea how to do from the console. If this were windows taking out the drive wouln't have destroyed my os.

Screw it
--------

Help for linux users does not exist.

So I will format and reinstall AGAIN!

Linux is real stable, a lockup and it falls apart.

I will try to kill two birds with one stone and attempt to install with the second hard drive in the computer.

I... Live... Again!
-------------------

Back again. Two more formats and reinstalls later. Aparently linux doesn't support having more than 1 hard drive because if you try to set one up your system will freeze.

But I will keep trying till I get this.

It has now been about 48 hours of installing linux. That makes about 96 installs of windows98. And I'm not yet finished.

Alright.
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Finally got the second hdd working. I actually had to reconfigure my devices and put 1 cdrom and 1 hdd on each ide. In linux you must not be able to have 2 hard drives on the same ide.

In windows I had no problem, but... this isn't windows.

The next thing I worked on was my sound card. I found ou that linux doen't support a montego II and the only drivers were hacked drivers and were impossible to use without further hacking them in a hex editor. So I swapped this sound card with a sound blaster from another of my machines. I see no problem with this switch because I know window supports that sound card (windows supports everything).

Next I decided to see if my tv wonder ve worked. I went to load up xawtv which was installed in the setup.

...

...

Xaw tv is nowhere to be seen! There was no shortcut made to it. So I searched the hard drive and found "xaw" since linux doesn't use extentions I would never know if it was an application or not unless i tried to run it. And it worked... kinda. Linux detected my tuner as a PAL tuner. So I had to change /etc/modules.conf and add some lines telling it I had an ntsc tuner. I restarted and 10 minutes later linux was back up (this is normal btw)! I loaded xaw tv and changed some more settings and it worked! except its reception is very crappy as compared to the way it worked in windows. One more problem solved.

Now I wanted a shortcut in the "start menu type thing". But aparently you cannot do that. "writing to vfolder is not supported" So I made a shortcut on the desktop.

Next chapter: "File sharing!"

Anyone have any ideas about how to browse my shared files on my windows network?

*crickes*
Damn crickets!
It's like a ghost town in here!

This is retarded
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Rh9 comes with a "program" to configure your samba server but not one for the samba client.

After setting up the samba client with a read-write share and making a username I was able to see the computer on the windowsXP machine. When I tried to access it I got a username and password dialog box. So I typed in the username and password I made in the samba server configuration program. This resulted in the windowsXP machine asking for the username and password again, indicating that the login was incorrect, or not accepted.

So then I went to figure out how to configure the client to access the windows shares. Since there is, aparently, no gui for the client interface I would have to do it manually. I would only have to go to the consile and write 30 or so lines of friggin code and then MOUNT THE DRIVE! OMG!

So I found a program that had a gui and tried to install it. I tried to "install" my first program. Aparently you cannot install anything in linux without first COMPILING it! Thats right you actually have to compile your own programs in linux! So following the instructions I typed (at the damn console again!) './configure' and it errored out and told me I have no c compiler. Then I went into the add/remove programs in redhat and looked at the development tools that i didn't install. Seeing that they were all named with names that only a programer, not like myself, would understand, I quickly exited out of that.

So here I am no further because you can't download programs for linux, you have to download code, compile it, install it, then run it. And if you get an error you are supposed to change the source code to make it work! Either that or recompile your OS!!!! WTF!!! WTF!!

This is so stupid, I guess I will type 30 lines of friggin code to make samba work.

And I dread the day/week/month/year or however the hell long it takes to get this crap all setup when I want to install a new program or game!!@# OH WAIT!!! By then there will have been 129873461857 more releases of linux and I will be behind because they will be using kernal version 98.23.7.1.3.976.4.6.71b

Linux is not an operating system like windows. Linux is an operating system like DOS. The kmd is a program like dosshell only pretty. Linux is on the level of DOS. And DOS is FAR superior.

I must remember that Linux is not bad, it is functionally challenged

Today
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I found a workround for this samba crap. I can open the share in konqueror and it sit there all crappy but I found out that you can go to the menu on the top and mount the share. Once mounted it seems to work allright. Aparently linux cannot show a 1/2 sign because I cannont make one nor can I browse a folder that contains one. On my shared folder for ranma 1/2 I have the actual 1/2 character and linux shows the directory as locked! CRAAAAAAAPY!

Anyway thats that. Im happy enough with that.

And thats when I tried to play an mp3 from my shared drive. XMMS tells me it has no support for mp1/2/3 files! HAHAHA! Thats priceless! A winamp clone that can't play friking mp3 files! There was a file to download and fix this and I did.

Before I go any further I just want to take this time to step off to the side and comment on the fact that EVERYTHING. EVERYTHING!!! is an issue in this "OS". For example, playing an mp3 was an issue!

Back to the horror show that is linux. Next I decided to play a video clip, there was absolutly no way that was going to happen, I had to go get a player. So I decided to get the bloated piece of crap that is real one player. I figured with an os that is this slow and clunky it would fit right in. I downloaded realplayer and installed it. I must admit that I was very surprised at how well it ran, thats when i realized that it was made by a company that knows what its doing, rather than the bunch of unorganized and unpaid people that is the redhat developers and linux community. That being done I was hoping that I could play some avi files (hoping not expecting since I do know that codecs are necessary). And of course I needed codecs. I decided to start with divx5 since thats the newest. I downloaded that and "installed it" and it didn't allow me to play the divx avis. After some digging around it has become aparent to me that there really is no such thing as a universal codec in linux. You need to download a player like "mplayer" or "xine" and they have crappy built-in codecs. And of course they are made at those "sourceforge" sites *shudders* so when you download them you are really just downloading source which you have to COMPILE!!! This is what I'm working on now, figuring out how to install a program! At the same time I am looking for a download of one of those 2 players for redhat 9 in a .rpm format. The .rpm is a clever invention never before seen in any other OS. After you download them all you have to do is click on them and they install a program for you. This is simply amazing no compiling or anything! Windows certainly doesn't have that!

Oh and after you install a program with a rpm file it doesn't make a damn shortcut for you. And then all you have to do is track the damn program down and run the file that has no extension.
...
...
...
NO EXTENSION!! YOU JUST ASSUME THAT THE FILE WITH NO EXTENSION IS THE EXECUTABLE! THEY HAVE NO SPECIFIC ICON EITHER.

And of course sometimes that doesn't even work. In the case of realplayer if you run the realplay file it does absolutly nothing. 4 hours of internet searching later it turns out you have to use some shell script file in a completely different folder!

On a happier note I did get my modem working just fine, but that is certainly not a thing that linux did right. This was a completely hardware modem so, it kinda does all the work itself.

Thats all for now but there will be more problems to come COUNT ON IT! Linux would neve do something right the first time.

I still havent got my media player, or played a dvd, or installed a game (like counterstrike, q3a, etc). Or many many othe things that should be easy in an OS. So it should take a few more weeks of work to get that stuff done.

OK, sounds like you're not having much fun here.. I only read some of the issues here, but figured I'd give you my 2 cents worth since you're really having a very rough time...

1) The mounting the hard drive hangs. Your experiences with that are *VERY* abnormal. It sounds like the linux kernel and your IDE controller do not get along at all. A kernel update is probably what's needed to make that work properly. You might do a google search with the name of your IDE chipset that's on your motherboard, and linux to see if anyone's got some answers. It's been a really long time since I've actually run into an IDE chipset that linux didn't handle pretty well right out of the box, but it sounds like you've probably found one. Linux will normally handle *MANY* drives without much trouble. One of our servers here has 9 drives, and has been running for 200 days without a reboot. That reboot was caused by a power outage that lasted longer than the UPS. Before that it had been up for 600+ days without an issue. A redhat 9 server that we use for backing up other servers is running only IDE drives, and is running 4 devices just fine.. one 160 gig ide, one 250 gig ide, and one 320 gig ide, and one dvd-rw. It's routinely reading and writing to all drives at once, and never has a problem. I know that all this cheerleading for linux doesn't actually help you get things going, but I just want you to know that it really should work, and pretty easily normally.

2) Using linux as an smb client. The simplest way to do this is not obvious, and it seems that not many people know about it, but it's really quite easy. Just open up your "home directory" folder on your desktop, or some other nautilus window however you'd like, and in the location field up top put something like this:

smb://servername/sharename

If it needs get a password from you, it'll ask you..

If you have any questions that I can help you with, go ahead and mail me directly (I don't read this forum, I just tripped over it in a google search) and I'll try to help you. This forum really looks pretty freak'n dead..

-Jeff Buck
jeffb [at] umci.com
(obfuscated to try and prevent even more spam)