Mepis will not install except in Minimal Mode

I don't know a heck of a lot about Linux.

But, your problem may be pretty simple.

Try pressing F3 at the boot menu (that same menu that you selected minimal from), staying with the default menu choice.

That will pop up a box that lets you select the correct resolution for your monitor and it appends a cheat code to the boot line for the selected resolution.

Sometimes, it doesn't detect the graphics card/monitor combination just right, and you have to tell it what resolution you want it to use before it works. That's where the F3 key comes in (and it doesn't have anything that lets you know pressing F3 brings up a list of resolutions at that menu).

BTW, are you trying to boot into SimplyMEPIS 6.0, or 6.5.02?

I'd go with the newer 6.5.02 version. It's got newer versions of things like Firefox, Flash Player, and more installed (and it's also got things like NTFS-3G pre-installed so you can both read and write to NTFS partitions).

Jim C.

could you tell us what video card you have?

Thanks,
Alex

I would try using F3 to set the correct resolution, select the Nvidia driver option, then at the end of the grub line type vsync=58-62 and see if the CD will boot then.

Even if it hangs up somehow you should now be able to see any error messages. There may be a boot cheat code that will help but without any error messages it's hard to tell which ones to try...

Even if it hangs up somehow you should now be able to see any error messages. There may be a boot cheat code that will help but without any error messages it's hard to tell which ones to try...

I could not see how to set NVIDIA driver, but I set the resolution to 1280X1024. The bottom line of the grub menu read: init=/etc/init apm=power-off vga=791 quiet. I erased that line and typed vsync=58-62
It started to load and last few lines read as follows:-
ACPI: Looking for DSDT.....not found
ENABLING IO-APIC IRQs
TIMER: vector=0x31 apic=0 pin1=0 apic2=-1 pin2=-1
MP-BIOS bug:8254 timer not connected to IO-APIC
trying to set up timer as ExtINT IRQ.....failed
Kernel panic - not syncing: IO-APIC + timer doesn't work!
Boot with apic=debug and send report. Then try booting with the "noapic"option.

Then it hung.
Alex

Alex:

I don't know what your issue is being cause by. But, are you sure the CD is good?

If so, why don't you try SimplyMEPIS 6.5.02 and see if it boots OK?

It's got some newer stuff in it, including a newer XOrg and an Nvidia driver choice in the boot menu for a driver that appears to support the Nvidia GeForce 6100 series adapters according to this Wiki page:

http://www.mepis.org/docs/en/index.php/NVIDIA_supported_cards

Maybe a newer SimplyMEPIS version would work better with everything you've got in your new PC, even if it's something other than the graphics causing it.

If you've got a high speed connection, it's available from the mirrors (with both 32 and 64 bit versions).

http://www.mepis.org/mirrors

Jim C.

I somehow missed that you were trying 6.0 instead of 6.5. 6.5 has the Nvidia driver option at bootup - 6.0 doesn't. I agree with Jim that 6.5 is more likely to detect things on your motherboard automatically, but 6.0 should still work if you get the right grub line

You didn't need to erase the options already on the grub line, just add the vsync= option to the end of the line. I normally remove the quiet option also when I'm troubleshooting as it suppresses some messages.

The error message you got suggests you add noapic to the line which would result in a grub line that reads:
init=/etc/init apm=power-off vga=791 noapic vsync=58-62

With any luck the CD will boot with that line.

You didn't need to erase the options already on the grub line, just add the vsync= option to the end of the line. I normally remove the quiet option also when I'm troubleshooting as it suppresses some messages.

The error message you got suggests you add noapic to the line which would result in a grub line that reads:
init=/etc/init apm=power-off vga=791 noapic vsync=58-62

With any luck the CD will boot with that line.

Well, that worked in a way, but not quite. It booted OK, got into Root and I installed Mepis, but when I rebooted and selected Mepis on the Grub meny all I got was a blank screen. I have tried several times and I am still getting only a blank screen.

I am getting a little "nervous" of this.

Tell me how to overwrite MBR and remove Mepis without destroying Windows, please.

Thanks,

Alex
Alex

Unless you went into one of the Mepis assistants and made changes to something (graphics, resolution, etc.) after you booted up, it should have used the settings you passed at bootup.

If you want to overwrite your master boot record to remove grub, you'll have to do it this way:

Boot into your Windows CD, and select the Recovery Console menu choice you'll see come up eventually (it will prompt you to press R for recovery console).

You'll be asked to select a Windows install (it should find the one on your C drive), and you'll be prompted for a password if one is set for the Windows Admin user.

That will take you to what looks like a DOS Prompt.

Then, type this to overwrite the boot record, removing GRUB that MEPIS installed:

fixmbr

But, before you do that, let's try to figure out what's happening here.

Do you get the GRUB boot prompt when you reboot without the CD? If not, something went wrong with the install. The graphics drivers, etc., are not even loaded at that point.

Or, is the black screen coming up after you select a boot menu choice?

There are ways to reinstall GRUB (and the graphics parameters) from a Live CD if something went wrong. The MEPIS CD acts as a repair CD in that respect.

Does your new PC have XP or Vista on it? If it's Vista, I don't think the GRUB install in 6.0 supports it properly (so, you'd have to edit a text file to add some parameters for it). The GRUB install with the newer SimplyMEPIS 6.5.02 does work OK as far as adding Vista properly to the boot menu.

Let us know exactly what is happening at bootup (are you getting the boot menu with the mepis choices in it or not)?

If so, it's just a matter of booting back into the Live CD and adding the correct parameters to the boot menu choices (although they should have already been added there).

What do you see in this file if you boot into a LIve CD as root and look at this file with an editor like kwrite? Copy and paste the contents.

/boot/grub/menu.lst

You may need to add the same parameters to this file so that it boots OK if they are not in there already.

Note that you can also get to it this way as root:

kdesu kwrite /boot/grub/menu.lst

There is also a possibility that you messed up the graphics options if you made any changes to it after you booted into a Live CD before installing. For example, if you selected a different graphics driver, it may not be compatible with your card.

There is a way to fix that easily, too (MEPIS can reinstall it, based on what is currently running after booting into a Live CD). Let us know what you've got in the above file first.

Did you make any changes to your graphics config after bootup (for example, checking a box for an Nvidia driver)?

If so, that's probably your issue versus something wrong with the grub boot menu choices. If you pick a graphics driver that is not compatible with your card, it's going to break the install (and the older Nvidia driver in SimplyMEPIS 6.0 may not work with it). That's one reason I suggested using 6.5.02 instead.

All you have to do to fix that is use the MEPIS X Windows Assistant after booting into a Live CD (using the original options you used to get into it before).

As long as you don't make any changes in those screens, using the "Reinstall X" choice from a Live CD will reinstall the default nv driver with your card (versus one of the proprietary drivers that may not be working right with your card series) and you'll be able to boot back into the hard drive install again.

Just type this from a console and you'll see the reinstall x option on the repair tab with 6.0 (6.5 uses a different utility name that does the same thing).

kdesu mutilities

or, you can do it this way (with root as the password when prompted using a LIve CD):

su
mutilities

Jim C.

Jim,
I cannot thank you enough for the long and detailed instructions. I am running WinXP Pro installed on a 250GB IDE drive. I isntalled Mepis onto 160GB SATA drive, partitioned into 100GB and 60B. I wanted to install Mepis onto the smaller, 60GB partition, but it would not let me. It offered only one choice and that was the 100GB partition.

After installation I rebooted and as soon as I selected Mepis on the Grub menu I got the blank screen. There is something odd about computers that run both IDE and SATA drives in that the system defaults to IDE drive as the Primary Master - i.e. jumpering IDE drive as a slave and SATA as master will not work!

I overwrote the MBR and I immediately "lost" the SATA drive as Windows would not read it. I then disconnected the power from the IDE drive and booted up with Windows CD, which got me into Recovery Console where I was able to remove all partitions of SATA drive and later format it in Windows after I reconnected the IDE drive. That restored me to the position I was in before I installed Mepis, but what a palaver.

However, nothing is lost and now that I know how to revert to Windows only, another installation of Mepis would take but a few minutes. However, I think you were right when you said that I should be installing Mepis 6.5. By the way, I also have SuSe and that would not even boot up!!!

I shall be soon going to broadband. I am on dial-up and my 56k modem takes about 6mins to download a MB, so I have to rely on a friend to download Mepis for me. I don't know if anything is not quite right with my copy of the CD, but it worked on the older machine. The Grub meny did not have any choices as regards NVIDIA drivers, but I added "noapic vsync=58.62" to the command line during installation and that got me into root. Whilst in root I configured the modem and tested that it dialled and it did.

When I have more time, I will go through the installation again and follow your instructions to determine what is going wrong.

Thanks again,

Alex

Alex

Well, it sounds like it's just a few quirks with GRUB causing most of your issues. That's easy enough to fix (the boot menu you see is only a text file that is easily edited).

Windows wouldn't see the ext3 partitions on the other drive anyway. So, that's not indicative of any kind of problem.

Your boot order in BIOS will impact where you need to install GRUB to though. It needs to be on the MBR of your boot drive (and that is determined by the boot order in your BIOS).

Sometimes with mixed drives, it can confuse things.

I've run into a few quirks with drive orders changing around with mixed drives (SATA + IDE) in my Dell before. But, editing /boot/grub/menu.lst can fix that kind of thing (which is why I suggested copying and pasting it's contents here so that members could let you know any changes that might be needed to it).

SimplyMEPIS 6.5 has newer versions of some things like the grub installation. Ditto for Nvidia drivers. But, unless you need accelerated graphics (i.e., you want to use 3D type stuff, Beryl, etc.), the default nv driver in 6.0 works fine for most stuff and you could probably get it working OK with a bit of tweaking.

I'd probably go with 6.5 anyway, especially with newer hardware. That way, you'd have a better chance of everything being recognized OK to start with, so that you don't need to tweak the config files as much to get everything working. It would also have newer stuff like Firefox 2.x, Flash Player 9, NTFS-3G for reads and writes to NTFS partitions and much more compared to the older 6.0 release.

As long as you don't touch your NTFS partition, your Windows install should be safe. So, it's just a matter of getting GRUB installed correctly so that the entry for it in /boot/grub/menu.lst points to the right place when booting if you want to use it (and you can always use fixmbr from a recovery console if you boot into a Windows CD if you want to get rid of GRUB later.

IOW, I wouldn't worry too much about messing it up. Just make sure you don't try to install anything to your NTFS partition. Boot records, etc., can be easily fixed if something goes wrong.

Jim C.

Jim,
I have re-installed and have the same problem. Once I selectg Mepis from the grub menu the screen goes blank. Windows boot OK.
Here are the contents of menu.lst:-

timeout 15
color cyan/blue white/blue
background 0639a1
gfcmenu/boot/grub/message
title MEPIS at sda1, kernel 2.6.15-26-386
root (hd1,0)
kernel/boot/vmlinuz-2.6-15-386 root=dev/sda1 nomce quiet vga=791
title Windows at hda1
rootnoverify (hdd0,0)
chainloader +1

I hope this show what the problem is.

Thanks,
Alex

I'd try changing it to the same way you got it to load from CD initially (adding noapic and vsync=58-62) the grub boot line.

IOW, instead of this (as it is right now)

kernel/boot/vmlinuz-2.6-15-386 root=dev/sda1 nomce quiet vga=791

Edit it (just use Kwrite as root, just like did to before to see see it):

kdesu kwrite /boot/grub/menu.lst

This is what you want this line to look like:

kernel/boot/vmlinuz-2.6-15-386 root=dev/sda1 nomce quiet vga=791 noapic vsync=58-62

You may need to go into the MEPIS X-Windows assistant from a live cd and make some changes there if that doesn't work.

You can change things like monitor type so that it uses the right settings for one from a Live CD using this assistant, then use the "Reinstall X" menu choice to save it back to the hard disk install.

The Live CD acts as a repair CD in that respect and you can usually dig around and find what your monitor needs for the sync frequency stuff if your monitor is not listed.

Try changing that line in /boot/grub/menu.lst
first (adding the same parameters that let you boot from a Live CD) and let us know if that fixes it.

Jim C.

This is what you want this line to look like:

kernel/boot/vmlinuz-2.6-15-386 root=dev/sda1 nomce quiet vga=791 noapic vsync=58-62

Jim C.

You are a genius, Jim. It booted OK and I am writing this in Mepis/Firefox. It's fantastic! Big thanks also to TMkb4cq.

I am not completely out of the wood yet, because I noticed that I don't have Gimp and Quiteinsane, but those were also missing after initial installation on the previous computer, so I downloaded them with Synaptic.

Thanks again,

Alex

Great.

I'd still try to grab the newer 6.5 release and install it instead if I were you though.

That would save you the hassle of trying to upgrade Firefox, Flash Player, etc., since it's got stuff like newer versions of Flash Player already in it.

It's also got a newer Nvidia driver in it if you wanted to use it instead of the nv driver used by default with Nvidia cards and more.

Jim C.

I'd still try to grab the newer 6.5 release and install it instead if I were you though.

That would save you the hassle of trying to upgrade Firefox, Flash Player, etc., since it's got stuff like newer versions of Flash Player already in it.

It's also got a newer Nvidia driver in it if you wanted to use it instead of the nv driver used by default with Nvidia cards and more.

Jim C.

Initial excitement died quickly when I realised that it would not play CDs or DVDs and that Kooka would not start up at all. I got Internet connection and email, but not much else. And the screen display had to manually centered on each logon. So, I have uninstalled Mepis 6.0 and restored the SATA drive to Windows, even though I don't really need that much storage.

When I am on broadband, I will download a copy of 6.5.02 and see how that goes.

However, I did enjoy "forcing" it to install and boot despite the initial frustration.

Thanks again,

Alex
Alex

I wouldn't have done that (removed GRUB from the MBR).

The centering of the display kind of thing is probably just the way your graphics is configured (and you may need to make sure you press the F3 key and select the appropriate resolution at bootup so that SimplyMEPIS installs the graphics configuration correctly).

If you type this from a console after booting into a LIve CD (making sure to press F3 at bootup to select the right resolution and type in the same options you had at the GRUB boot prompt before), you'll get the Mepis utilities in 6.0:

su
mutilities

You'll find screens there for specifying more information about your monitor. One of the generic LCD choices would probably work OK for starters if you don't see your monitor in the lists you can pull up there.

I have to do that with my Graphics Card/Monitor combo to get it working right. Sometimes, using something like the vsync cheat options alone won't fix it. Then, just use the "Reinstall X" choice you'll see to upgrade the hard disk install with that information.

You can also reinstall GRUB from a Live CD using the utilities and get the old boot menu back again as long as you have not overwritten the partition that SimplyMEPIS is installed on yet. The Live CD lets you easily fix that kind of thing.

6.5 would be your best bet (but, there is no guarantee that you won't have to tweak it, too).

The good thing is that once you make a few changes to let SimplyMEPIS understand more about what your hardware requires, you'll be all set.

Jim C.