[Hardy] Does not install on VIA PD6000E Motherboard (Multiple problems)

[MG]

8.04 Hardy Beta Ubuntu (several versions) (current version for 17-Apr-2008) does not install correctly on the VIA EPIA Mini-ITX PD6000E motherboard for multiple reasons. All tests were with the i386 versions. 7.10 Gusty installs correctly without problems.

1) When trying to boot the regular desktop install from the live CD (regular Gnome Ubuntu), the system would crash. This occurs immediately after the point where the progress bar (shown during booting, waves back and forth below the "Ubuntu" logo) disappears, but just before the brown screen (which should show before the desktop fully appears) appears. I'm not sure if this description is clear enough, but there's no text which describes what step things are on. The essential point is that it is just before the live CD desktop should appear. This happens consistently at exactly the same point in the sequence (this was tested approximately 5 times). The system will either turn off, reboot, or simply freeze with a blank screen.

2) Using the alternate install CD (Gnome Ubuntu), everything will install except for Grub, which will not install. LILO can be installed, but the system hangs on reboot at "[48.418762] Uniform CD-ROM driver Revision 3.20".

3) Using the server install, Grub will also not install. LILO will install and the system will reboot and run.

Previous versions of Ubuntu (Gnome) have installed and run on this hardware. The system was running 7.10 previous to this. The PC is primarily used as a test system. Just prior to this install, the system very briefly had a version of Windows Server 2008 on it in a dual boot configuration with 7.10 Gusty. Both OS would dual boot with this fine. All the partitions were removed and the hard drive was completely reformatted several times during the course of attempting to get Hardy to install.

The PC is used for test purposes, and the drive can be wiped at any time for further testing if necessary.

[MG (m12-griffin)]

Further testing with RC-1 (on same system as above):
I conducted further testing using version RC-1 on the 19th of April. The results are as follows:

1) The regular desktop (Gnome x386) still does not install, but now exhibits new symptoms. The live CD now makes it to displaying the desktop, but then locks up immediately, or at the very beginning of the install. This was tested approximately half a dozen times, and failed each time. The failure point would be slightly different each time.

2) The alternate install was not tested again (I will do this later and report the results)>

3) The server version installed correctly with Grub and without any obvious issues.

[Evan (ev)]

Do you have a serial port and null modem cable that you can use to grab the kernel logs from? If so, please attach the output to this bug report.

[MG (m12-griffin)]

I don't have a cable, but I can make one. A bigger problem is that
although I have two PCs, I only have one monitor, keyboard, and mouse,
and I don't have a KVM switch. This means that I can only operate one
PC at a time when installing software.

I assume that you are referring to using the serial kernel debugger. I
haven't used this before, and the information about it on the internet
seems rather sparse.

If you have any suggestions on how to work with this, I would be happy
to give it a try (or anything else you can suggest that I do to
provide more information).

On 21/04/2008, Evan Dandrea <email address hidden> wrote:
> Do you have a serial port and null modem cable that you can use to grab
> the kernel logs from? If so, please attach the output to this bug
> report.
>
>
> --
> [Hardy] Does not install on VIA PD6000E Motherboard (Multiple problems)
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/219061
> You received this bug notification because you are a direct subscriber
> of the bug.
>

--

---------------
Michael Griffin

[MG (m12-griffin)]

Further testing with RC-1 (on same system as above):

 2) The alternate install CD for RC-1 was tested and appeared to install and run OK. There was one error during installation (an unspecified error during application installation), but retrying the operation caused the installation to proceed to what appears to be a successful conclusion. This is being posted from the test system.

This attempt did not test the Ubiquity installer.

[Robert Roth (evfool)]

Thank you for reporting this bug to Ubuntu. Hardy reached EOL on May 12, 2011.
Please see this document for currently supported Ubuntu releases:
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Releases

I've tried recreating this bug with Oneiric and was unable to, given the information you've provided. Please either a) upgrade and test or b) increase the verbosity of the steps to recreate it so we can try again.

Please feel free to report any other bugs you may find.
---
Ubuntu Bug Squad volunteer triager
http://wiki.ubuntu.com/BugSquad

[MG (m12-griffin)]

This bug is so old, there is no point in continuing with it. The release is obsolete, and the specific hardware in question is also relatively out of date. I still have the hardware in question, but have long since switched to Debian server for it, which has always worked flawlessly in this application.

It is possible that the root problem in this case *may* have been that the Ubuntu "i386" releases have had many bugs related to actual i386 support. I have filed other bugs in this regards, but these bugs would get fixed for one release, only for the identical bug to appear again in the next release. That however was a release management issue, which is not something in the scope of this bug report.

If support for this class of hardware is no longer important to Ubuntu, then there is no point in anyone else wasting effort on it. I have marked this issue as "invalid", as there is no option for "so old probably nobody cares any more". However, it was a valid problem at the time.

As background, the motherboard mentioned in this report is an embedded Mini-ITX board used in things like point of sale and industrial applications.