ubuntu 9.10 won't install on dell dimension e520

[SuperEngineer]

UNABLE TO INSTALL 9.10 (desktop):

Before I start begging for help may I openly say a big thankyou to all involved in UNR 9.10 - it is so sweet on my acer aspire 150 - a vast improvement over 9.04.

It convinced me to give 9.10 a try on my home pooter - a Dell Dimension E520 [core duo processor, 2gb ram, 220gb hdd etc. plus usb peripherals including broadband dongle & hp printer. It has Jaunty (9.04 desktop) & windows installed separately using grub to boot (I need windoze for my gps navigator 'speed traps' update).

... but: I am UNABLE TO INSTALL 9.10 either as a full install from the CD or running in windows (XP) - the install hangs(?) shortly after the 9.10 'spotlight' splash - I have waited for 2 hours for the 'busy' icon to disappear or for further HDD activity. Running as a 'live cd' all is ok (but wireless USB dongle will not connect to the wireless network - the wireless network itself IS recognised).

I initially tried an upgrade from 9.04 to 9.10 but was very disappointed with the [slower?] boot & loss of internet (same symptons as described above), so I deleted te partition and went back to 9.04. I have now done this twice -same result both times. On (twice) trying a fresh install from scratch (Jaunty completely removed first) there are many, many 'squashfs' errors shown during the (failed) install. Install fails. Hard disk checks out ok as do the several CD's tried,

For what it is worth I downloaded from the GB mirror. I have downloaded from different wireless networks as well as using the home broadband (talk about grasping at straws!), I have downloaded & burnt ISO to disk using Ubuntu and tried also with windoze but always the same result - if GB mirror file was corrupt there would have been news of it by now methinks. If CD drive was failing why the total success with UNR !

I suspect an incompatibilty with it the pc itself (see Bug #191225)... is it somehow not compatible wit the Karmic load method or Karmic itself? As both the WUBI and the install fail, why does UNR load on on it OK? (In desperation I eventually tried loading Koala UNR on the home pc and that worked 100% -albeit with same wireless dongle problem.

Anybody got any ideas? I'm now back to using 9.04 - wishing I could get the benefits of 9.10 :(
Thanks in anticipation. for any help... and thanks to anybody & everybody involved in the 9.10 netbook remix - at least my 'on the road' machine as been given a new lease of life!!!

...for what it's worth Bug Report #191225 is "ubuntu won't run on Dell machines with a PCI video card installed" but this dates back to u7.10 - surely no longer relevant?

UPDATE:
Just found this (April 2008) thread in Ubuntu Forums:

"Ubuntu wont install on a Dell Dimension E520"
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=744640 is the URL.

Any possibilty that this could be a reintroduced SATA driver / SATA support problem that was cured in or before 9.04 but re-introduced in 9.10?
(I have 2 SATA disks fiited, 1st as main disk & 2nd for back-ups).

[MarkJ (marker)]

I have a dell T3400 workstation, the install freezes / hangs in the middle of the 9.10 spotlight splash. 9.04 works fine. 9.10 installed fine on other machines for me.

I am not sure how I can get some decent debugging information to post. I have 1 SATA HDD and 1 SATA DVD drive, it freezes when trying to install the amd64 iso from a CD, i don't know about i386, or installing via usb.

[SuperEngineer (suprengr)]

Sounds like the same problem.... and yes - debug gathering seems to be an impossibility in this situation. Ideas re helping the bug mentors welcome....

[MarkJ (marker)]

The CPU of the dellT3400 workstation is an Intel Core 2 Duo E4500... there is no onboard VGA on the motherboard, only a PCI (or PCIe? I'll have to look) video card. I tried doing the install with all the F6 kernel options specified: acpi=off noapic nolapic edd=on nodmraid and it still froze at the same point.

I just realized there is a kind of a debugging mode on the install cd. When you select 'install ubuntu' a list of kernel boot options shows up near the bottom of the screen. If you backspace the words 'splash' and the 'quiet' then your install process dumps lots of debugging information during the whole process of loading up. I will try this later and report my findings.

[MarkJ (marker)]

The freeze happens on the karmic 9.10 amd64 and i386 install CDs... both when you go to install... and when you go into 'try ubuntu without changes'.

Boot sequence:
1] Bios
2] Grub
3] glowing ubuntu logo
4] hourglass for a splitsecond
5] dark brown ubuntu spotlight
FREEZE.

If you remove splash and quiet from you kernel options on boot, it only gives you a debugging info in place of the glowing ubuntu logo, and not in place of the dark brown ubuntu spotlight where it freezes. What i am looking for is debugging info during the dark brown ubuntu spotlight load process.

Video card: PCI Express 16X nvidia 256 MB Quadro NVS 290

[MarkJ (marker)]

Looks like the dark brown ubuntu spotlight is called xplash.

So this bug could be retitled 'karmic live cd freezes during xsplash'.

[SuperEngineer (suprengr)]

I think the following might be worth trying, if only to see if more info
is given on going round or breaking out of the loop described below;
and for the same reason (the loooping you can get it to do), I'm not
sure about renaming bug to 'freezes during xsplash' because:

I have found that if I break out of the appaarent freeze or attempt a
clean shutdown, the system hasn't totally frozen... but the install can
go in a loop of....

1/ attempt shutdown or close of install;
2/ busy icon goes back to the xsplash uubuntu spotlight;
3/ busy icon reappears;
4/ install apparently (only the install has stuck, the pooter is still
able to deal with interrupts) appears to freeze again with no further
HDD activity;
5/ start from [1] again...
etc.

["SuperEngineer"]

[MarkJ (marker)]

Well this is officially your bug. I was appeared to have a similar bug thats all.

I solved mine!
I used xforcevesa as a boot option on the 'try ubuntu without changing anything' option worked and loaded into a live session.
source: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/BootOptions#Common%20Boot%20Options

Look at the boot options... try some... maybe eventually you'll get it working.

xforcevesa:
"Force X to start using VESA driver. Useful for some notebooks with uncommon video interfaces."

So i guess my video card, PCI Express 16X nvidia 256 MB Quadro NVS 290 (DVI output only) has an uncommon video interface.

[SuperEngineer (suprengr)]

Good to hear you got your live session going, well done.

In my case, I have always been able to get the live session running without any problem (apart from the USB wireless dongle being unable to connect to the wireless network in 9.10 (no problem with it in 9.04) and I was able to upgrade from 9.04 to 9.10 ok (albeit with the same connection problem).

This is definitely an installation bug in my case. The fact that the install never gets as far as the partition manager probably means (I.m guessing here) it is before grub2 is installed and before ext4 file system has come into play.

[SuperEngineer (suprengr)]

btw...anyone checked te forums recently... increasing instances of 9.10 install failing ... yet this bug is still counted as 'new' and 'undecided'. Was 9.10 released too early I wonder?

[SuperEngineer (suprengr)]

[SOLVED?] installed Linux Mint 8 which took GRUB to 1.97 (beta4)... don't like Lnx Mint but so what. Then was able to install Karmic (from same CD as b4) without any prob. BUT... Grub was still the Mint version and now not showing either Jaunty or Karmic! Restarted Mint in Safe mode and used Grub Rescue to relocate both successfully.
Now booted to 9.10 BUT STILL FOUND SAME KARMIC PROB AS MANY OTHERS HAVE FOUND... LOSS OF USE OF USB WIRELESS MODEM. Plugged in mobile broadband dongle and, although Karmic doesn't seem to like it (7 re-starts b4 it was recognised!) spent hours letting Update Manager do it's stuff. This updated GRUB again & allowed me to choose sda0 or sda1 for location. sda0 chosen and now back to a proper Grub boot choice (Karmic / Jaunty / Mint / XP).
What a hassle just to work around Karmic install probs!!!
Now... anyone got an idea as to how to get USB wireless modem to connect to the network that Jaunty has no problem with????

[SuperEngineer (suprengr)]

[SOLVED] this was a partitioning prob that grub didn't like -lesson... don't remove partitions and leave a numerical gap bewtween those remaining.