Problem booting FC5 after good install and doing the "first boot" configuration

[Debbie Deutsch]

Kam Leo wrote:

> 
> Only one IDE connector! And I thought my system was cheap. You really
> have an economy motherboard.
> 
> Seriously, the sharing of that single bus does affect operation of all
> devices. Try turning off dma. If that solves your problem I recommend
> that you replace the hard drive with an SATA one.
> 

Oh, I have systems that cost more (because I want them to do more).
This is a little barebones system that can physically hold at most two
storage devices.  There is no need for more than one IDE connector or
two SATA connectors.  Given what I want to do with it, I will never need
more than those two drives in this system.  At the same time, I didn't
want the system to be physically larger than need be.  So, this system
is just right.

Although I respect your seriousness and good intentions in offering your
advice, I am convinced that having the hard drive and the optical drive
on the same IDE bus cannot be the problem.  There are several reasons
for my belief:

1. There was no problem with this configuration when the hard drive had
FC3 on it.  FC3 booted and ran, no problems.

2. The optical drive is doing nothing when I try to boot.  (For one
thing, booting Linux from the hard drive does not involve trying to read
or write to the optical drive.  For another, there is no media in the
optical drive to read from.)  So, even though the optical drive is
connected to the IDE channel, it is not using it.

3. The install process, during which both drives *are* active, worked
fine, twice.  The system always hangs at the same point in the boot
process.  If the problem were flaky hardware, the error would not be so
reproducible.

4. If merely having two devices on the same IDE bus were enough to cause
problems such as I am experiencing, there were be a lot more people
complaining about similar (and other) problems all of the time.

Although I am no expert when it comes to Linux, I have almost 30 years
experience with computers, including some quality time up close and
personal with system architecture and design (mostly for data networking
gear, but it's the same issues and principles).  I fully appreciate the
fact that the communications performance on a shared bus may decline
when there is more than one active user of the bus.  However that is not
the same thing as there being errors.

Debbie