danleff

I did try the Linuzant drivers in the past, which worked very well with the supported modems that they note. Be aware, that this package is not free. You get to try it out at a limited speed output (14.4Kbps). If you pay the fee, then you get full functionality of the packaged driver, which is $19.00 USD. But, It's worth the price to avoid the headaches, in my opinion, to get the modem working.

To answer the question simply, no. At least not "automatically." In order to boot from any drive in your system, the bios must be set to boot from that drive. This means going into your bios setup and changing the boot order of the drives. See the related thread below entitled Trying to install FC5 on an USB HD to dual boot from a laptop with WinXP. In order for an OS to boot, automatically, it needs to be set in a bootloader on the MBR of the boot drive, as set in the bios, or you need some sort of boot disk (floppy or CD based) that allows Linux to boot. Of course, you can also set the USB to boot first, then if the drive is not found in the bios, have the second boot device be the sata drive. However, you bios needs to support this function. Also, as noted in the related thread, Fedora does not load the modules (drivers) for a USB boot (at least not in the previous versions) to boot off of a USB drive. Doing so requires some good knowledge of Linux and changing the initrd file in Fedora to do so properly. Fedora and other Linux flavors are designed to allow a dual boot on a system's internel hard drive. Is there any reason why you don't want to do this?

Originally posted by Tetsuo75: Quote: Barmaley mentioned about using FixMBR and Fix Boot on the windows CD to get rid of the grub loader. However, I just wanna know if this is safe? Will I lose my Win XP this way? Yes, this is where his post comes in handy. As long as you have the full installation cd, go into recovery mode after booting the cd and use the commands. Follow his links. This will safely recover the Windows bootloader on the MBR of the first drive. One issue is that you need to know the Windows administrative password in order to do this. So, you have two choices. Leave the second hard drive in the system and have both operating systems (find another small drive for the older system), or remove the second hard drive after deleting the Fedora installation partiitons. You mentioned an older system with no hard drive. You need to have a way to reformat the second hard drive before putting it in the older system. Why? If you install anything other than Linux on the old system, say Windows, it will not be able to see the drive during the installation, as it has Linux partitions on it. However, Windows XP will see the partitions and allow you to remove them and format the second drive. If you go into the control panel-->Administrative Tools--> Disk Management, you can manipulate the partitions on the second drive. Of course, make sure that it is the second drive that you are formatting! There are also a couple of Linux based Live Cd distros that can do the job for you as well, such as Mepis or Knoppix, which have a partitioning tool that can easily do this. You can also boot the Fedora CD and follow the installation process to the partitioning section, pick expert options, manipulate the partitions (make one fat 32 partition on the second drive) and allow the partitoning to continue, then stop the installation at that point. Each hard drive manufacturer also has a good partitioning tool that you can use to pre-format drives and get them ready for an OS installation (Windows). But the easiest way is to use the XP tool, if you do not want to download a distro or hard drive tool to burn to a CD. Of course, this all assumes you will be putting Windows on the older system. but, I hope that you consider a Linux distro instead.

Now I remember the issue. In previous versions of Fedora, ther modules (drivers) to load an external hard drive are not available in the kernel initrd file at boot. Fixing the problem involved booting in rescue mode and making a new initrd file to use at boot time. So fixing the issue involves knowing a bit about Linux and following some specific directions to get it to work. I will have to look at ther installation cd to see if there is a boot image for this. My guess is that unless someone knows if this issue is fixed in Fedora Core 5, you would have to wait for a solution to be posted by someone who has actually done it. So, my question still stands. Do you have a full Windows installation CD to recover the MBR od the internel drive? Also, how much experience do you have with Linux? Understand, that Fedora has been designed to be installed on an internel hard drive. I would imagine that Windows would pose the same issue, since you don't have an option in the bios to boot from USB. I'm a little surprised at this, given the newness of your laptop.

The GRUB Hard Disk Error is a reesult of grub not being able to raed the disk geometry of the drive. My guess is that you installed again and installed Grub to the MBR of the hda drive. On the first installation, you accepted the default installation partitioning on the USB drive, right? What make and model laptop is this? Some laptops have problems with disk geometry, especially with USB drives. The Fedora release notes make note of this (which no one usually reads until after the fact) for Sony Vaio laptops. Also, did you pre-format the USB drive before the Fedora installation, or allow Fedora to format the drive for you? The ideal situation, in your case, would have been to install fedora on the same hard drive in the laptop, especially since your bios does not support booting from a USB drive. Was Windows pre-installed on the laptop and/or do you have a full Windows CD installation disk?

Yes! Now that you know it works, make the changes suggested to the /boot/grub/menu.lst file once you are in Fedora. The command line at the boot menu was a temp. fix, until you know that it works.

jarves; Please post the exact make and model of the modem. There are a few of these out there that have like names. Is this a Motorola modem, or otherwise? In the best senario, if you get the model number off of the modem itself, this helps ID the exact chipset. I'll try to look up some links to explain exactly what I mean. The first clue here is the word "soft." this usually means that this is a winmodem. I have not used one in a while, but I bet this is a conexant or Motorola HSF modem chipset. They are a real problem with most distros, as they do not have their own onboard controller chip to handle the modems processes. These modems rely on the system's main processor to do most of the work and are suually designed for Windows speciffically. There are some folks who have gotten some to work, But many are legagcy modems made for Dell or Gateway systems, which are a bear. tty refers to the serial ports on the computer. With external modems, linux tries to identify the correct serial port to detect the modem on. In tour case, you have a PCI modem, which is fine. If I remember kppp uses the same designations to emulate the port, say ttyS0, ttyS1 and so forth. I seem to also remember that if kppp refers to /dev/modem... with these modems, it is usually symbolically lined to the tty port. This may be missing. have you tried to change the designation to one direct tty setting? Again, I have not done this in a while, so bear with me.

Folks, if new readers of this thread want to post any problems with their grub issues, please start a new thread. There are too many users posting here and it becomes difficult to follow each problem individually. Thanks; Dan

Originally posted by Tazman10: Quote: I have downloaded FC4 and it downloaded and installed with no problems. I downloaded with the FC4 to boot up first. Do you mean that you chose Fedora to be the first boot option for Grub? You elected grub to be installed on the MBR of hda or hdb? You did not change the boot order in the bios, did you? Quote: I then edited (hda) to Windows and then selected automatic partiioning. I also left everthing else to either automatic or default. What do you mean by editing hda to Windows? Either you selected manual partitioning, or elected to use free space on the hda drive to install Fedora, or told Fedora to use free space on the windows partition to install. Let's be clear what drive you installed Fedora to, the primary master drive or the second drive? Quote: When my computer rebooted it came back up with a black screen with GNU GRUB version 0.95 (639K lower/1014720 upper memory) Minimal BASH-like line editing is supported and so on. Then grub> and blinking cursor. and nothing else. I have not been able to get anywhere. I tried cat /boot/grub/grub.conf and comes back ERROR 15: File Not Found. I have tried other vaious commands to try and see my partitions and unable to any kind of response. You can't use normal linux commands at the grub screen. This will not work. There are specific commands that work at the grub command line. Quote: I can't get to my Windows or the FC4 that I just downloaded. Before this I had a GRUB 1.5 Booting... and nothing came up. Do I need to reinstall again or can someone help me. Did you previously have another distro or linux installed? Is that what you are trying to say? I hate to be a pain, but in order to help, we need to know exactly what you have done to the system, so we can assess what has happened. Folks often leave out critical information when they post.

Tetsuo75 wrote: Quote: So I decided to try Fedora Core 4. But when I slaved my 2nd harddisk to my Win XP PC, (for installing of FC4) my win xp cannot be started when I removed the 2nd harddisk with FC4. It says "Grub Error". So now I need my FC4 in order to boot from my Win XP. Exactly! There areb two things that happen when you install grub from any distro (flavor of Linux). In your case, you wrote to the MBR of the primary master drive with the grub bootloader. The second drive has the grub reference files needed for grub to work. If you remove the second drive with the grub reference files, then you disable grub. The best way to restore the MBR, is with the XP installation disk/cd. You don't have one. So, you have two choices. Leave the second drive in the system, as is, or try a method that may or may not work, to restore the Windows bootloader to the MBR of the primary master drive. Let me ask, what make and model system is this? Since you don't have an XP disk, I assume Windows was pre-installed on your system?

esprit, Sorry for the delay. I have to confess, I have been playing with SuSE 10.1 and got lost with it. I have also been giving myself a crash course with Fedora Grub on my system. The following assumes that you are booting from the second drive, which you changed to after the Fedora installation. Again, your system has the LVM partition setup, so let's go step by step, as I have a different setup. Let's try this. At the main grub screen, you should have Fedora will boot in so many seconds. Push enter to get to the dual boot screen, which shows both Fedora and Windows boot options. Highlight the first Fedora line and push the "e" key on your keyboard. This gets youto the edit screen for Grub. Highlight the first line that has root (hd1,0). Do the same thing once you highlight that line, press the {e} key. Change that line to root (hd0,0). You will have to use the forward and back keys to navigate the line and edit it. When finished, hit the enter key to accept the change. Then hit the "b" on the keyboard to attempt a boot. If you still get an error, post it.

barmaley; He does not need to restore the MBR. it is still on his primary master drive. There is no need to do this. The issue is that he installed Fedora on a second drive and chose to install the bootloader on the second drive, not the MBR of the primary master. He has been changing the boot order in the bios to try to boot both operating systems. He is booting from the second drive and can boot into Windows. He just can't boot into Fedora. esprit, I will look for a Fedora specific guide, as each grub does things a little differently from the command line.

Try 7 Tools Partition Manager. This demo copy should allow you to do the job. Let us know.

When you install Fedora, you need to make a decision. You must have a bootloader to boot from. All the directions and instructions that I have seen for Fedora state that Grub should be placed in the Master Boot Record of the boot drive. If you plan to install grub on a second drive and change the boot order in the bios, then you must set the advanced options for grub during the Fedora installation. When you try to boot Fedora with the drive designations changed in the bios, without the appropriate changes, then Grub is looking at the wrong partition on the wrong drive, hence, the error 17. You can't install grub on the second drive, then change the boot order in the bios and expect grub to boot correctly. Windows did not boot for this reason, as when grub invoked the Windows boot.ini, the boot.ini was looking for Windows on the first drive in the boot order, in your case the second drive (which now is the first boot drive). The map commands told grub to reverse the order of the drives, so boot.ini could find and boot Windows. Same thing for linux. You changed the boot order in the bios. Grub needed to match that change, or it gets confused. The problem in your case, is that then you reinstalled grub. Did you do this after you changed the boot order in the bios? And if so, how did you exactly reinstall grub and to where? It looks like from the data that you posted, that you have a very confused grub and /etc/fstab system because of the changes that you made. Please post exactly how you reinstalled grub and to what drive. If you used the command line ie; grub-install...., what drive did you install to hda or hdb? Do you know how to edit grub from the menu screen during the boot process? We can make some changes there and see if they work. If so, then you can add them to your menu.lst file. Please note exactly what you entered, if via the command line. Some folks make the mistake of installing grub incorrectly, say to hda1 rather than the master boot record hda. In your case, if you followed the directions posted above, or otherwise, it's important where you installed grub the second time. Was it hda or hdb, or otherwise?

Please clarify what you are currently trying to do. You had Windows XP on your system, then installed Fedora Core 4. Was Windows booting properly when you had dual boot with Grub? If I understand you correctly, you are trying to re-install Windows XP now? Is there a reason why you are re-installing Windows? As I understand your question, the Windows installation is hanging at the point that it is detecting the hardware on your system? I never use QTparted to alter my hard drive partitions on a Windows system, as it has not been reliable with changing NTFS partitions. One point to consider, as well, is that before you install any Linux distro, you should defrag the Windows partition first. This assures that any stray system files are moved away from the end of the Windows partition, so that when you modify the Windows partition, data or system files are not lost.

See if this guide helps at all.

Don't know much about imacs, but go to the Ubuntu ADSLpppoe page and see if you can reconfigure it manually, using this guide.

Try this article and see if it helps.

If you are referring to the kernel source package or related packages, you should be using Yum in Fedora to install these packages. Yum is designed to solve any dependency problems, by downloading needed packages. You could have downloaded the madwifi packages for FC5 easily also. But, I guess that's water under the bridge now. It's also good news that Breezy saw the wifi card right off. One point for Ubuntu.

Could you post the make and model of your system, so we can see what you have in terms of the ethernet card? Laptop or desktop? Or, if you know what ethernet card it is, post the make and model of the card/PCI device. You mention that you are using DSL? Does your DSL connection use auto DHCP? Do you have to sign in to the account using a username and password? BTW, the Ubuntu wiki page is your friend in this case.

Can you clarify what error definitions that you are looking for? Grub loading errors, or when installing packages?

How many cd disks did you use to install Fedora origionally? I assume that you checked off the packages that you wanted to add, then clicked update? Take a look at this article about adding packages to Fedora and see if it helps.

Could you clarify a little more what you currently have? You had Fedora ONLY installed before and now installed Windows, or had Windows installed previously and then Fedora (dual boot senario? Do you have the grub splash screen still, or the Windows bootloader only? Windows XP disk management should see your Fedora partition as "unknown partition." You can't uninstall Linux from Windows per sae, just delete the partition. This does not get rid of Grub from thew MBR. But I wonder what you mean that someone changed your login and password? Others may have had access to your system without your knowledge, or you are using a computer that is used by others as well.

geoffs; Quote: After reading through a few forums I tried using Linux rescue. After trying different approaches from different forums it appears that despite the fact that I ticked install grub to hda, it has installed it on hd1,0. After using linux rescue, did you get to the root of FC5 by typing in chroot /mnt/sysimage? If not this will not work. Also, if you used the default installation options to install FC5 on the system to hdb, then the grub reference files are on the /boot partition of the second drive. You need to then tell the installation to place the grub bootloader files to hda. Quote: I am however sick of installing windows and linux. This is the problem. How many times have you tried installing different distros on the drive. If you did not delete each distro's instance of Grub from wherever you told each distro to put grub and the bootloader itself, you probably have multiple installations of grub on the system. The same rule applies. You did not change the order of the hard drives in any way when you did any of these installations, did you? If you boot from hda (the primary master drive), do you boot directly into Windows? This assumes that Windows is the first OS on the primary master drive.

Too many posts on this thread to respond, without confusing others. Let's take one at a time. kscips; Quote: I was able to boot into the loader which prompted me to select the OS I wanted. For about one day, it worked flawlessly. I could choose XP or Linx. Then, today, after hitting "any" key to get to the loader, the system ignored my key press and always boots to Linux. Has anything changed sine the initial boot was working? You should not have to hit "any key to continue." This leads me to believe something has changed. I assume you get this as the system tries to boot either Windows or FC5. Do you get the initial boot menu, the system tries to boot, then you get the error, which then you hit "any key to continue?" Are there any error messages preceeding pressing any key to continue? You did not change the boot order in the bios, did you? Quote: I read the post about the timing issue for the boot loader and how to go to /boot/grub/menu.lst and change it from 10 to 20. Mine is currently about 3 according to the boot screen. When attempting to use cat to view the file, it says permission denied. What are you trying to change, or I should say, what line? The one that should be changed is timeout=10. This value should be changed to 50. This allows enough time to choose which OS to boot. To get to root user, you must type in at a console su, hit the enter key, then enter the root password when prompted for it. The "cat" command needs to be run as root user. However, this just displays what the file contents are, it does not let you edit the file.