danleff

Well simpla eis realtive.... Assuming a lot of things, did you do a default installation of Fedora (I assume Core 5) on the second drive, allowing grub and partitions to be set up automatically by Fedora....the following would be good to know; 1. What assignments /boot/grub/device/lst have for your drives. 2. What the grub.conf file currently says, and; 3. what the output of fdisk -l says the partitions are on the drives. You can throw caution to the wind and try getting into rescue mode, chroot into your Fedora partition and run; grub-install --recheck /dev/hda Quote: I have more than one Windows partition on drive-0 ("hda"), so I'm too afraid to attempt the "fixmbr" method (mentioned elsewhere on here) from XP's Rescue Mode. I assume that you mean that you have Windowes installed on the first partition of the primary master drive and you have one or more Windows data only partitions on the drive... You don't have to worry about partitions. The fix for the MBR doesn't willy nilly install the Windows bootloader to a partition, but to the MBR of the primary master, or boot drive that is the first boot device in the bios.

Yes I do. Things have also changed with the Linux rescue so that the old fixes seem out-of-date. I'm sure that someone will find a workaround. If you do the install telling FC to partition the USB drive w/o LVM, with the traditional linux partitions. It will most likely be easier to get the process to work correctly. At least james419 and I know how to manipulate grub to work much easier. And doing this has given me some additional insight into some probable bugs in the FC 5 installer that others have experienced.

Your previous post stated; 10. kernel (hd1,0)/vmlinuz-2.6.5-1.2124 ro root=/dev/hda2 11. initrd (hd1,0)/initrd-2.6.5-1.658.img The kernel and initrd file names do not match. What I was trying to determine is if grub was set to boot the same version of vmlinuz and initrd. if this was a typo, that's fine. Before you jump ahead and start over, do you want to post your /boot/grub/grub.conf file so we can try to fix the Windows boot problem? if not, please post the exact make and model of your system, so we can make sure that you don't have any special considerations with the system that will affect re-installing your Operating Systems. Or at the very least, avoid some headaches if you do decide to reinstall everything.

Actually, the information that you are starting to get on that furum is good advice. Realize that these HP notebooks are specifically made to run Windows and have proprietary hardware in them, again, designed for Windows. HP has a line of notebooks preinstalled with various flavors of Linux, so you know that it can work. Make sure that PnP OS is set to off in the bios, as suggested. If this does not work, try the noapic command at the install splash screen. The other issue is video. This system has an ATI RADEON XPRESS video card, which could be one of the problems. See the article here regarding the VGA setting during installation. These are some of the issues with the hardware that you have to deal with. At what point do the instructions on the Kanotix guide stop making sense? Is the guide specific for the version of Kanotix that you are trying to install?

Can you post what exact model of HP that you have? Also, providing a link to the install guide you mentioned would help. In Ubuntu, you can try passing the noapic command to the kernel on install and see if this helps. So, at the splash screen install menu, pass the option noapic and see if this works. I will also guess, depending on what exact model that you have (video card and all) that certain issues are at hand. You may want to look at this linux forums thread.

See..things have changed! You tried an upgrade from Fedora Core 2? The upgrade was to the second hard drive where FC2 was originally installed? The upgrade failed. Why, because, you still have the kernel loading from FC2, the 2.6.5-1.356 kernel and initrd image? I assume that the kernel and initrd files are the same version? Did you also by chance change the boot order in the bios, or did you not change this boot order at all? Can you post the Windows entries from the grub.conf file? Once you answer my questions, we can go from here.

I can offer a partial explanation of the issue. Again, the LVM issue is what hangs me up and it's proper usage. splashimage=(hd0,0)/grub/splash.xpm.gz Points to the /boot partition, which holds the necessary files for the splash screen and grub stage files. title Fedora Core (2.6.15-1.2054_FC5) root (hd0,0) kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.15-1.2054_FC5 ro root=/dev/VolGroup00/LogVol00 rhgb quiet initrd /usb-2.6.15-1.2054_FC5.img The kernel and initrd files are also on the /boot drive, or the first partition on the Fedora installation drive. So, this is correct. The root=/dev/VolGroup00/LogVol00 allows the root of Fedora, on the LVM to be initiated. This is probably where the problem exists. I have yet to find a good description of the logical progression of these partitions anywhere and if it is amiss in this case. I just tried a USB install with FC5 on my system (linux expert). The process fails with trying to create the special usb version or initrd as chroot. I also get a grub> hang on boot off the USB disk. Running Linux rescue causes the modeules to load, but FC5 fails to load everything into /mnt/sysimage. Mounting chroot /mnt/sysimage, of course, results in the kernel and initrd being absent, as they are in the /boot partition. I tried some workarounds for this that I found, but FC5 seems to have some changes that make the directions that I found obsolete. mkinitrd is not able to be executed. Of course, I tried to do the install using (defaulting to) LVM, allowing Fedora to format the USB drive for me. I did this intentially, to see what effect LVM would have on the process. I would agree. It seems that setting up the install with the traditional partitioning setup (do not allow LVM) seems to be the way to go. I'll keep it up and report back. This is one of those challenging tasks that I like to try. You learn so much from it!

Let's go one step at a time. Quote: Everything was ok until last week when i kept getting GRUB just before the option to select windows or linux. It would not let me do anything! Something has changed, or one of your filesystems has been damaged. So, Fedora booted fine until.....? Did you make any changes to the installed drives, say like changing the boot order in the bios? Quote: I went through the process of initrd etc to get FC5 running but i am not sure if ii did it correctly. I need to find out whether i should have used HD0 or HD1 . I'm not sure what you mean by this. What process of "initrd and etc to get FC5 running? Can you be more specific? Quote: I tried reinstalling FC5 and it keeps hanging !! Keeps hanging where? During the installation, after the installation, on boot? Quote: I tried in grub> the command chroot.... and it does not recognise it ! This is not a grub command, but a command to use after running linux rescue, once the system boots and you get a command line, to get to the root partition of FC5.

Did you try the instructions on the link that I gave above, or for Fedora Core 4 here. BTW, the double post that you made with no title will be deleted, as this will make it easier to follow things here.

What are the names of the images that you downloaded? What version of Fedora did you download? Did you burn the disks as iso images, or just data disks? If you open the first installation disk's contents, what do you see, one iso file image, or a bunch of directories and files on the disk? See my guide here. Or, did you follow the directions on the Fedora Installation Guide?

That was my thought as well. Does Windows boot OK and do you get the graphical Fedora Grub boot screen? These are not scsi drives, correct? your main drive in the system is sata and the USC is also seen the same, as a scsi drive. All sata drives and USB drives are seen as sda,sdb...and so on. This is normal. It does not matter if you have ide drives in the system or not. Remember, when you change the bios boot order, all things change. Are you trying to boot the system without changing the bios boot order? Your Grub.conf file looks wrong, as well. Let me look closely at this. The file acts as if it is wanting to booting USB first, which is why I asked about changing the boot order in the bios at any point during the process of installing Fedora, or after it was installed. The bad magic number error is related to the root= line and Grub file pointing to the Windows partition. The catch here is the LVM partition on your system. The root= also does not look correct. The problem is that I don't know about LVM designations, as I do not use them (the exact correct order). Quote: I still had same error message after editing device.map (in Linux rescue mode) with: (hd1) /dev/sdb (hd0) /dev/sda where USB drive is sda and my laptop hard drive as sdb, then rebooting. Why did you change the designations of the /boot/grub/device.map file? If you are booting from your hard drive on the system, sda should be that drive and sdb the USB drive. However, it looks like you are booting directly off the USB drive with Grub on the USB drive, correct? Any possibility of posting the /etc/fstab file, especially as it relates to the LVM root drive? Does it look like (exactly); /dev/VolGroup00/LogVol00 / ext3 defaults 1 1 LABEL=/boot /boot ext3 defaults 1 2 I hope that I am not confusing the point here.

OK, so I looked up your board and found that it has a Realtek RTL8111B chipset for the LAN. It looks like from this SuSE support forum article that this chipset is not supported yet. You would have to compile a module from the realtek support site to get it to work. This is not an easy task for a newbie, but if you want to give it a go.... BTW, are you using the 64 bit version of SuSE or the 32 bit version? [Edited by danleff on 2006-05-31 02:25:09]

It sounds like you never configured the card during the installation. I assume that you are using Broadband and not DSL? Go into Yast and configure the card. Follow the menu items and pick DHCP at start. Then see if the interface comes up. You may need to reboot for it to work right off.

I would be the first to admit that i don't know a thing about raid arrays, but someday.... However, did you originally set up the bootloader using the advanced bootloader feature during the installation process? This part of the insttructions speaks to grub and raid arrays. Also, did you see these notes on raid and Fedora Core 5?

You need to have a plan (see guys and gals, I said it again). I'm glad you asked before moving on. What exact model of Gateway is this? Any reason why FC4 and not FC5? In my opinion, FC5 has been a big improvement and has better hardware detection (hence why I asked what model of Gateway). First, defrag your XP drive before you do anything. This is a good idea for a number of reasons. Then read some directions,...yes directions! Try Fedora Core 4 Installation Notes. Or Fedora's Installation Guide. You don't necessarily need to partition your hard drive, just have some free space on the hard drive. Once you defrag the NTFS partition to move all the stray files in nice order, away from the end of the partition, then you need to resize your partition to creats some free space at the end of the hard drive. Windows XP can do this, or you can use a partitioning utility, like PartitionMagic, or System Rescue CD. Fedora, during the installation process,can also offer to use free space on the NTFS partition, but I recommend having empty space on the end of the drive. This is much cleaner. How much space to leave free at the end of the drive, depends on what you want to do. If you are going to just experiment with Fedora, between 5-10 gigs of space is fine. This should be enough for a reasonable installation of Fedora and to give you some breathing room. Fedora will use the free space on the drive, if you tell it to, in order to make the partitions that you need for it. But please, if you decide to do this, make sure that you have a backup plan. Back up any important files and documents that you have. I don't recommend that a first time user (especially with a Gateway system) do this on their only PC. Fedora is still a little complex and other distros (flavors of Linus) are still more user friendly for new users. Do you have a full installation Windows XP CD?

Quote: Could the error result from the change of device assignments for USB drive before and after FC installation? It appears that FC's intialisation is not checking boot partition in USB drive, ie /dev/sda1 (ext3, /boot). Boy, I really have to try this. To answer your question, yes. When you change the driive designation in the bios, you change the physical designations of the drives in the system. So, you need to alter Grub and where it looks for the correct partition. If you got into rescue mode and the root of the installation with chroot /mnt/sysimage, then you probably need to change the root designation for the Fedora partition to match how the drive is seen now (booting from USB in the bios). Maybe james419 can comment on this (since he has done it), but try changing in the /boot/grub/menu.lst file, title Fedora.... boot (hd1,1) to title Fedora boot (hd0,1) You may also have to change another value, but let's see if this works first.

What failed with your current device and ndiswrapper? Often there are specific instructions for each distro to get it to work. Did you consult the ndiswrapper wiki? The card compatability list shows that it does work.

Well, you will like this. Fedora Core 5...works right out of the box! Printing and scanning works fine! I can now shelf my HP Laserjet 5L that I've had for many years. Fedora Core 5 continues to impress me. Now off to Mandriva and Debian...

Yes, this works on some systems and not on others. This is a second, less desirable method. but if it works, fine!

Great! I'm going to try this tomorrow! Good work!

Yes there are. Any PCI card with a prism chipset. What version WG111 is this 1 or 2? Does the serial number start with WG41 or 165 (version 2) or; WG16 or WG72 or 130 (version 1)? If it is a version 2, then you may be able to get it working with ndiswrapper.

As I thought, you probably have Fedora's grub on the second hard drive. This is evidenced by the partition; /dev/hdb1 * 1 13 104391 83 Linux Where the * means that the partition is marked active, probably with the grub bootloader files. See if this Fedora Core 5 Linux Installation Notes article helps. Look specifically under the installation notes. I will also try to post/find some specific directions where to set Grub to the MBR of the hda drive later on today.

Interesting! I have one of these exact units and have not tried to set it up yet. I will try it with Fedora Core 5 first. Maybe we can get it working together. What happens when you enter (if you have it) /etc/sane.d/hp.conf and uncomment; /dev/usb/scanner0 Since this is a USB scanner, not scsi or parallel unit.

Looks like we posted at the same time (although the true times are off). Please give me the information that I asked for about your system, the Windows version and installation disk availability.

Grub boot error; 15 : File not found This error is returned if the specified file name cannot be found, but everything else (like the disk/partition info) is OK. So this error occurs BEFORE you changed the boot order of the drives, or after? Do you get the Fedora grub splash screen, or the grub screen from your previous installation? The issue is that the grub bootloader that you have may be from a previous installation. If you did not remove grub from ther previous linux installatiion, that one is still resident on the MBR. Why do I think this? The error 15, which means that it can't find the correct kernel and/or initrd files for Fedora. Did you reformat the partition before trying to install Fedora and then use custom partitioning, during the installation to point root to the formatted partition? Yes, you did get a summary screen, during the installation, to configure a bootloader. You probably missed it. On the summary screen where you are allowed to choose packages to install, timezone etc...configuring the bootloader was an option. I lot of folks miss this. So, by not setting this, you chose the default location that Fedora picked for you. This was on the second hard drive, not the MBR of your boot drive, hda. Fedora assumes that you are installing on a single hard drive and the MBR is on that drive. If you don't tell it otherwise, then it doesn't know. As I said, you can't install or update the grub bootloader from the installation disk, by allowing it to proceed to install or update the system. The source of your problems here is that FC5 is already installed. It sees a grub installed (probably the new one on the second disk) and there is no new kernel to install, you already have the kernel on the hard drive. Confusing, but true. You need to try to install grub from the rescue mode. However, if you have already changed the hard drive designations and done things, realize that you are not trying to install grub to hda, if you swapped the drive designations. The second drive becomes hda when you make it the primary master, or change the boot order in the bios. Please don't do this and attempt any changes! The graphical installation problem is a source of another issue. Give us some specs. on your system. make or model of computer, or if you built it yourself, what essentialhardware is on the system. Did you check to see if your system met the hardware requirements of Fedora? At issue here is the video card in the system, and the amount of ram on the system. Sorry for the overly technical explanations, but they are important. ...and if all goes wrong, do you have a full installation CD of Windows???what version?