Mageia 2 DVD versus Mageia 2 Live CD

[andrewl733]

Hi everybody

I just thought I would share my experience with Mageia 2. I have had many issues with the DVD installation. I tried to install it on 3 laptops and and 1 server -- all different hardware -- and I had issues with not booting after installation, and graphics problems (like black screens) on those that did boot. I was about to give up, BUT...

On the exact same machines, the Live CD has installed perfectly every time. I think there are some serious issues with the DVD. I have reported some of them in the Mageia bug tracker. It's not my download. I checked the md5sum before burning it. So, if you are having issues with the DVD, I would urge you to try the CD. For me, it has been like night and day. And the Live CD install has made me very happy!

[isadora]

Would you please be so kind adding a link to your bug-report?

[andrewl733]

Here's one:

https://bugs.mageia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=6090

I didn't fill out any more bug reports for the other installation issues because only 1 of the 7 bugs I reported during the beta phase of Mageia 2 was fixed. For instance, I reported a bug about the Mageia 2 beta (2 and 3 and rc) not installing on a Supermicro X9 motherboard because the USB keyboard and mouse were frozen after the initial boot. (https://bugs.mageia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=4905) Turns out that was only an issue with the DVD install and not with the Live CD (found that out when the Live CD finally came out). The bug was never fixed.

I know the Mageia community is making its best effort -- you can only do so much with limited resources. At some point, you lose interest in filing more bugs. I'm running Kubuntu 12.04 on my laptop now, and migrating all my company's commercial products from Mandriva 2010 to Ubuntu 12.04 . Sad reality. But I'm still running Mageia 2 on my children's laptops. And I bothered to pass on this tip that, if you are having issues with the DVD, you should try the Live CD.

I will still remain a part of this community. My first good experience with Linux was with Mandrake 8! I've been with Mandrake and Mandriva and more recently Mageia ever since then. I created a massive 10 Gigabit switch in my office with Mageia 2 beta 1 and it's still running like a charm. But time marches on and frustration sometimes gets the better of you. I won't totally give up, though.

[yankee495]

I had this keyboard mouse issue after updating 2010.2. It was the messagebus and haldaemon.

Boot to command prompt as root and:

service messagebus start
service haldaemon start

startx

Then I was able to trouble shoot it fairly easy. Just a tip in case it is the same issue.

[Ken-Bergen]

Welcome to the forum Andrew.

The DVD contains only open source software and device drivers and that's not likely to change.
If your hardware requires propitiatory drivers to successfully boot then as you found use the Live CD which contains most of the non-open source drivers needed.

[andrewl733]

I somehow doubt it's a "proprietary driver" issue. The Mandriva 2010 and 2010.2 "free" DVDs installers boot fine on that Supermicro X9DRi motherboard. So does the latest Debian DVD installation disk. So does the latest Fedora installer. So does the Ubuntu 12.04 installer. Really, the only Linux installer that I have tried that has not been able to get past the installation menu is Mageia 2 DVD (but not Live CD).

It's a similar story on my Macbook Pro -- I was able to install Mageia 2 from the DVD, but then the system would not boot. As I said in my bug report:

I installed Mageia 2 X86-64 DVD final release on a Macbook Pro 5,1 15" model.
Installation appeared to proceed okay and I got the Grub boot menu after
installation. However, whatever boot selection I made

Mageia 2
Failsafe

with or without modifications of the boot command, adding "xdriver=nvidia" or
"xdriver=vesa" or "nomodeset" or whatever

boot up gets stuck. If I boot to Mageia 2, I get the following error message:

Failed to start Wait for Plymouth Boot Screen at Quit
See 'systemctl status plymouth-quit-wait.service' for details

If I boot to failsafe, I get something different:

dracut Warning: Unable to process initqueue
dracut Warning: "/dev/disk/by-uuid/{UUID}" does not exist
Dropping to debug shell
sh: 0: can't access tty: job control turned off
dracut:/#

Which is why I suggested that people give the Live CD a try if they have problems with the DVD. I don't think it is made clear ENOUGH on the Mageia site that you are likely to have better luck with the Live CD versus the DVD. I am just one person and I had many problems with the Mageia DVDs. No problems with the Live CD.