trouble installing CentOS7 on medion laptop ...

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justfred
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trouble installing CentOS7 on medion laptop ...

Post by justfred » 2018/04/15 15:04:36

Dear forum,

I'm admittedly very new to CentOS (but not to Linux with 8+ years experience with Ubuntu and migrated to Ubuntu for my daily work in 2011; my children as well as my wife all run Ubuntus I have set up for them).

Because some software I'm interested in that is only supported on Suse / Red Hat (and thus CentOS) I had a go at installing CentOS7 on a medion laptop (Akoya series P6633 Intel i5 8GB ram with an nvidia optimus Geforce GT 630M 1GB graphics card) I had lying around. This laptop runs Ubuntu 12.04, 14.04 and 16.04 without any issues straight out of the box (and my son used it to do some ROS [ros.org] work for his master thesis).

I tried two methods but the result is the same:

1) using the CentOS-7-x86_64-DVD-1708.iso image:
the laptop powers off abruptly in the finishing installation phase
upon reboot I get the login screen greeter but the laptop powers off abruptly during the login

2) using the CentOS-7-x86_64-Minimal-1708.iso image: and then
the laptop boots fine into a terminal session and login is normal
I then install the GNOME Desktop by:

Code: Select all

# yum -y groups install "GNOME Destop"
# systemctl set-default graphical.target
# reboot
upon reboot I get the login screen greeter but the laptop powers off abruptly during the login

Any suggestions of what else I can try and check to progress ?

Many thanks upfront.

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TrevorH
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Re: trouble installing CentOS7 on medion laptop ...

Post by TrevorH » 2018/04/15 15:22:30

Powers off? Or reboots?
The future appears to be RHEL or Debian. I think I'm going Debian.
Info for USB installs on http://wiki.centos.org/HowTos/InstallFromUSBkey
CentOS 5 and 6 are deadest, do not use them.
Use the FAQ Luke

justfred
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Joined: 2018/04/08 15:35:43

Re: trouble installing CentOS7 on medion laptop ...

Post by justfred » 2018/04/15 15:29:26

Powers off abruptly [no reboot]

justfred
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Joined: 2018/04/08 15:35:43

Re: trouble installing CentOS7 on medion laptop ...

Post by justfred » 2018/04/15 15:42:13

Well I'll be damned !!
I wanted to record a small video to show it and now it just let me login normally.
I know I tried to reboot several times with the DVD.iso and there it did not matter it always powered off abruptly.
Now this minimal.iso added the GNOME desktop later on it seems to have "cured" itself (?).

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TrevorH
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Re: trouble installing CentOS7 on medion laptop ...

Post by TrevorH » 2018/04/15 16:00:41

I'd be looking at power problems and/or incompatibilities with nouveau or the intel driver (since it's got both). Oh, or heat. Could be worth looking at http://jperrin.org/centos/boosting-cent ... rformance/ as that problem affects things both ways - it doesn't enable the laptop power saving modes and nor does it allow servers to run at full speed...
The future appears to be RHEL or Debian. I think I'm going Debian.
Info for USB installs on http://wiki.centos.org/HowTos/InstallFromUSBkey
CentOS 5 and 6 are deadest, do not use them.
Use the FAQ Luke

justfred
Posts: 6
Joined: 2018/04/08 15:35:43

Re: trouble installing CentOS7 on medion laptop ...

Post by justfred » 2018/04/15 16:31:32

Thanks for the pointers ...
For the moment it appears to behave: it is rebooted to install the updates (black screen with a message to that effect in the middle).
The fan appears to be controlled (some times harder sometimes slower).
I'll check the nouveau driver as I know that that is sometimes an issue with Ubuntu as well.

... hmm it is rebooting again now ... (it that normal ?)

dang ... Now it powers off abruptly again during the login !?!?

Booted into ubuntu -> OK -> shutdown
-> Power on -> start CentOS (long boot with bar under the screen showing an orangy section to the right about a quarter of the screen width)
-> login screen -> fan slows down -> login
-> now for some time a black screen with the mouse working but nothing else -> and no other activity discernible
-> after a few clicks the mouse freezes -> power off using power button
-> Power on -> start CentOS -> login -> now normal again

Hmmm ...

hunter86_bg
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Re: trouble installing CentOS7 on medion laptop ...

Post by hunter86_bg » 2018/04/15 19:58:11

Take a memtest86+ iso , boot from that and do a full test (probably it will take whole night).

justfred
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Re: trouble installing CentOS7 on medion laptop ...

Post by justfred » 2018/04/19 06:44:21

Runing a memtest (Memtest86+ 5.01) and the first pass completed without errors in slightly under 45min.
Not sure that that is the problem.

justfred
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Re: trouble installing CentOS7 on medion laptop ...

Post by justfred » 2018/04/19 11:30:40

Not sure if I am onto something or not:

I completely reinstalled starting from minimal and adding the gnome desktop. (Note that the GNOME Live version also powers off).

However before rebooting to start the graphics environment I also disabled the libvirtd.service as I noticed that by being very unlucky my home network coincided with the virbr0 settings (!)

Code: Select all

# systemctl disable libvirtd.service
Now the laptop does not power off anymore upon login (cross my fingers).

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