No CDROM Error in Hardy 8.04 Installation

Improvements are nice, but sometimes they do away with support for older hardware, which is quite irritating. Recently I was installing Ubuntu Server 8.04 on an IBM Netfinity 5000 server, and while the installer was detecting and installing hardware it informed me I didn't have a CDROM drive. Since I was booting from the CD and the message I was receiving had come from the CD, I thought that was a silly message to receive. But lo, I couldn't complete the install. Well now I have a quick and easy solution, in case anyone runs into this again. It appears that Hardy is no longer loading the ide_generic driver by default, so here's how you can change that.

As always, be careful when following advice and procedures from this, or any other site, as your system and/or installation could be damaged if a mistake is made. See our disclaimer for details.

Boot from the distro CD you plan to install from, in this case Ubuntu Server, but I also tried this with Xubuntu. Once in the installation environment press Alt-F2. Then press Enter to activate the console. For those who didn't know previously, you can use several other consoles while installing or running Linux for use in recovery or diagnostics. This comes in very handy for snags in the installer, such as this and what I have come to call the "curse of anthy," which is where the installer hangs on installing anthy. Now type

modprobe ide_generic

and press Enter. It should think for a second and then finish. If all went well you should be able to press Alt-F1 and get back to the installer. Continue as normal and it should install and leave you with Penguiny Goodness.

Created: 7-15-08
Revised: 7-15-08