D.3. Trouble During the Installation

D.3.1. No devices found to install Red Hat Linux Error Message

If you receive an error message stating No devices found to install Red Hat Linux, there is probably a SCSI controller that is not being recognized by the installation program.

First, check your hardware vendor's website to see if a driver diskette image is available that fixes your problem. For more general information on driver diskettes, refer to Appendix F Driver Diskettes.

You can also refer to Red Hat's Hardware Compatibility List, available online at:

http://hardware.redhat.com/hcl/    

D.3.2. Trouble with Partition Tables

If you receive an error after the Disk Partitioning Setup (Section 3.17 Disk Partitioning Setup) phase of the installation saying something similar to

The partition table on device hda was unreadable. To create new partitions it must be initialized, causing the loss of ALL DATA on this drive.

you may not have a partition table on that drive or the partition table on the drive may not be recognizable by the partitioning software used in the installation program.

Users who have used programs such as EZ-BIOS have experienced similar problems, causing data to be lost (assuming the data was not backed up before the installation began) that could not be recovered.

No matter what type of installation you are performing, backups of the existing data on your systems should always be made.

D.3.3. Partition Creation Problems

If you are having trouble creating a partition (for example, a root (/) partition), make sure you are setting its partition type to Linux Native.

Tip

While partitioning your hard drive, keep in mind that the BIOS in some older systems cannot access more than the first 1024 cylinders on a hard drive. If this is the case, leave enough room for the /boot Linux partition on the first 1024 cylinders of your hard drive to boot Linux. The other Linux partitions can be after cylinder 1024. In parted, 1024 cylinders equals 528MB (this exact number is dependent on your BIOS, however). Refer to http://www.pcguide.com/ref/hdd/bios/sizeMB504-c.html for more information.

D.3.4. Using Remaining Space

You have a swap and a / (root) partition created, and you have selected the root partition to use the remaining space, but it does not fill the hard drive.

If your hard drive is more than 1024 cylinders, you must create a /boot partition if you want the / (root) partition to use all of the remaining space on your hard drive.

D.3.5. Other Partitioning Problems

If you are using Disk Druid to create partitions, but cannot move to the next screen, you probably have not created all the partitions necessary for Disk Druid's dependencies to be satisfied.

You must have the following partitions as a bare minimum:

• A /boot partition of type Linux native

• A / (root) partition of type Linux native

• A <swap> partition of type Linux swap

	Tip
	When defining a partition's type as Linux swap, do not assign it a mount point. Disk Druid automatically assigns the mount point for you.

D.3.6. Are You Seeing Python Errors?

During some upgrades or installations of Red Hat Linux, the installation program (also known as Anaconda) may fail with a Python or traceback error. This error may occur after the selection of individual packages or while trying to save the upgrade log in /tmp. The error may look similar to:

Traceback (innermost last):
   File "/var/tmp/anaconda-7.1//usr/lib/anaconda/iw/progress_gui.py",
line 20, in run
     rc = self.todo.doInstall ()
   File "/var/tmp/anaconda-7.1//usr/lib/anaconda/todo.py", line 1468, in
doInstall
     self.fstab.savePartitions ()
   File "fstab.py", line 221, in savePartitions
     sys.exit(0)
 SystemExit: 0

 Local variables in innermost frame:
 self: <fstab.GuiFstab instance at 8446fe0>
 sys: <module 'sys' (built-in)>
 ToDo object:
 (itodo
 ToDo
 p1
 (dp2
 S'method'
 p3
 (iimage
 CdromInstallMethod
 p4
 (dp5
 S'progressWindow'
 p6

 <failed>

This error occurs in some systems where links to /tmp are symbolic to other locations or have been changed since creation. These symbolic or changed links are invalid during the installation process, so the installation program cannot write information and fails.

If you experience such an error, first try to download any available errata for anaconda. Errata can be found at:

http://www.redhat.com/support/errata/

The anaconda website may also be a useful reference. The anaconda website can be found at:

http://rhlinux.redhat.com/anaconda/

You can also search for bug reports related to this problem. To search Red Hat's bug tracking system, go to:

http://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/

Finally, if you are still facing problems related to this error, register your product and contact our support team. To register your product, go to:

http://www.redhat.com/apps/activate/