Hello all. . this is my first exposure to KnoppMyth. I'm a relative newbie to Linux in general, but I have successfully installed and run Ubuntu, Mint, SuSE, Mephis, the old versions of Mandrake, and a few others. Getting tired of the requirement to endlessly send my hard-earned $$ to Microsoft, so I thought I'd try to build a Linux-based PVR/Media Center.

So here goes:
Downloaded and burned the R5F27 ISO this past weekend and proceeded to try to set up a PC. Used pretty mainstream components, Asus P4P800E board, Intel P4 2.8Ghz, 1Gb ram, ATi AGP video, ATi Pro Theater 550 tuner. The box has both DVD-R/W, and CD-R/W drives, both are again, mainstream components, Samsung and Plextor. And, of course, a WD disk drive.
The first attempt got as far as booting the CD to the first screen (pretty colors, by the way), before an error about being unable to continue. Something about the CD volume having errors and being unable to continue to read it. So, I thought maybe I got a bad cd burn and decided to try another. Burned the ISO at slow speed again (4X- like I always do) to try to avoid any errors. Same result - just kept prompting to try running the knoppmyth command with the "irqpoll" switch. Tried all the various suggested command line switches such as "testcd" (I think that's what it was) and loading the cd contents to RAM, none of which worked. They just occasionally got me a little further into the setup before it froze each time. After wasting a good part of my Saturday on this , I decided to give up in frustration.
I've got over 12 years as a SysAdmin and have burned perhaps a thousand or more CD's, so I think I'm a fairly good judge of the CD quality being OK.
Basically, I couldn't even get the install to run. Just don't know where to go from here. HELP!

Hi,

Some of the basic steps are to check the hard drive jumper is setup as the master (a) Also check the jumpers on the cd so it is the secondary master (c) Those are two requirements that boot needs.

You may have troubles with the ATI stuff but check the three tiers about hardware just to be sure.

One other "trick" I have had to use is to run the install cd from boot: knoppmyth testcd , It was the only way I could get to the install menu.

Mike

Two things come to mind and I have seen both of them.

When you d/l'd the iso image did you verify the check sum? MD5SUM I believe is the program I use.
usually ok, but things do go bump in the night.

Try this on another machine. use testcd as a boot option, Then the CD gives you the option of running a Front End only, granted it won't have a backend to connect to, but it is loading most of the Knoppmyth components at least to verify the CD.

Hope this helps.

TO mjl: Yes, I've verified the hardware settings. . and the box ran Windows XP successfully for over two years.

To bigbro: Checksum was OK. Tried the "testcd" option several times last Saturday, and it usually got a bit further into the setup before freezing. . but it was very inconsistent, as well. Didn't try the "front end only" option. I'll try that later, or tomorrow, and check the result. Thanks.

GVoyager -

Have you tried using a different CD-R? I had a older system I used that had trouble reading certain brands of CD-R. You might want to try a different optical drive as well.

gvoyager -- have you tried installing using the other optical drive in your system (i.e. the DVD-R/RW drive)? Also try downloading the iso image again just to make sure you didn't get an error during the download. Try taking out some of the components (perhaps the tuner card) and attempt installing? Apparently ATi has some problems with Linux.

Just to clarify -- does it show the knoppmyth splash screen when the cd is read during boot? If it does and you hit <enter> do any errors appear when the text appears on screen?

Just to make sure you don't have a hardware problem, try downloading and installing a different Linux distro to check that you can at least install some Linux on the computer.

"Something about the CD volume having errors and being unable to continue to read it."

Strip the box down to just what is needed for the PVR and try.

ie. 1 HD, 1 CD, 1 Tuner, 1 Video. If you get the install to finish, wait until the box is configured and working before installing the other parts.

Hi all once again. . And thanks for all the constructive suggestions. Mac - I didn't think that Linux of any distro supported plug 'n play, so I was relectant to install without all the hardware being present at the beginning.
But, because of the need to work at a real job and travel, I won't be doing anything with this for about a week. Already re-downloaded the ISO from the web, and I will try a new, third, CD. Even though the checksum said the previous one was OK, I thought I'd just start all over again. I'll get back to you all next week with the results.
Thanks again -gvoyager

I have a feeling it's your ATI components. They have very little (no) support for Linux and most of their cards don't work well on Linux systems.

If you have access to such, try substituting your ATI components and installing again.

Mike

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