Thanks guys for all the help.
I have been trying for almost a week to get Ubuntu 6.06 "Dapper Drake" version
of Ubuntu installed. I have at least 3 or 4 older mother
boards and half a dozen video cards. Apparently
Ubuntu is real picky about video chip sets.
I finally found an ATI video card that seems work.
"Basic Installation from one of the EMC2 Live CD's is easier and faster
than ever."
Well not exactly. I depends on how you save the image on a DVD
Fedora 8 Linux gives you an option. Image or file. If you choose
file it does not work. I found that out the hard way.
I find that Red Hat and Fedora are much easier to install
on a variety of hard ware. Ubuntu keeps you in the dark while it is
installing. There is nothing on the screen that tells you what, why or how
it is doing. After awhile you think the program has crashed and you hit
reset.
I have tried two versions so far. Ubuntu 6.06 and Ubuntu 9.04
They both appears to have the same problem on a variety of hardware.
EMC2 requires Ubuntu 6.06.
Also I suspect they do not like to install over other versions of Linux.
I bought Disk Purge to wipe an old Red Hat Linux drive clean and then used
Vicom Partition Commander to partition the disk and format it. That seemed
to help. No info in the instructions on the preferred file format so I used
Linux ext3 which may be a mistake.
I can highly recommends a $50, 1500 page book called Upgrading and Repairing PCs.
by Scott Mueller. There is a Linux version out. This is a complete history
of the PC going back to early IBM's and all the variations of CPU's and chip sets.
There are many.
I almost have it working. The Ubuntu 6.06 is running off the DVD right at
the moment and trying to install itself on the hard drive. It takes
so long that I left it running in the hangar and will go back latter to see
if it will boot from the hard drive.
Paul Lamar
Hi Paul,
You should be OK with ext3. The only thing a little inconvenient about
it is every 20 or 30 times you boot up it goes into a disk diagnostic
mode. Just go do something else for 10 or 15 minutes. You can cancel
out of it, but I figure having the file system checked every so often
isn't a bad thing.
I've been using Ubuntu for a couple of years now. I don't remember
having any particular problem loading it. I'm using an HP Pavilion
a630n with a 2.8 GHz Pentium processor and whatever video is built in
to it. Ubuntu makes it easy to keep all the software updated and so
far, I have never had a problem with any upgrade breaking the system.
It sounds like for your application you don't want updates anyway. If
you're not connected to the internet, updates aren't all that important.
Bob W.
Here's what I get from the Ubuntu Forums
Begin forum quote:
Refering to the GRUB Manual at
http://www.gnu.org/software/grub/manual/grub.html
It states that "Error 18" means,
Quote:
Selected cylinder exceeds maximum supported by BIOS.
This error is returned when a read is attempted at a linear block
address beyond the end of the BIOS translated area. This generally
happens if your disk is larger than the BIOS can handle (512MB for (E)
IDE disks on older machines or larger than 8GB in general).
If you're comfortable with changing BIOS settings, you could check
harddisk mode. If it's LBA or AUTO try changing it to NORMAL.
End forum quote:
The person that had asked the question reported that in his case
changing the setting to NORMAL fixed the problem.
Bob W.
Also, it can be caused by other problems. GRUB has to be in the MBR
and you have to make sure the disk is a "Master". The 8 GB referred to
isn't the total size of the disk. I think it has something to do with
where GRUB is loaded. I'm running on a 300 GB disk.
I got this info from
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=11764
Bob W.