danleff

I just installed FC5 on my 64 bit system, with just one sata drive onboard, dual booting with Windows XP. I have to say, I agree with Justbill. There have been a ton of improvements. It configured dual booting without incident, no fuss or muss. Yes, I set grub to the MBR. Once the install finished, I went to System-->Administration-->Network and configured my DSL connection in about 3 minutes. One problem was with the updates and adding new packages, You apparently need to be connected to the internet for this to work, out of the box. I have to scout around more, but apparently the package manager did not add the installation DVD to the repository. Not bad so far! In fact, Windows XP could not find my sata drive without having a floppy driver disk with the drivers on it. FC5 did this out of the box...no problem!

I think that you mean updates not upgrades? You just upgraded to Fedora Core 5. upgrade = move to the new version of Fedora update = install new updated packages that are available for the current release What method are you trying to do the upgrades with, yum, or the "RedHat Network (the update manager)?" I have yet to upgrade to FC5, so I will look at this when I do so this weekend. You do have an active internet connection established?

FC5 is very new, so i am not surprised that you are not finding a lot of information. However, zenarcher, frequents this site and reports no problems with dual booting. See his thread here. A lot of folks had problems with FC4, as evidenced by the number of posts on these forums. However, these problems may have been related to users not having a lot of experience setting up dual booting during the installation phase of FC4. I still maintain that Fedora is not for newbies to use as their first line Linux platform, but perhaps RC5 has improved on things in this release. I plan on doing an install soon, as I just received my new 84 bit motherboard in the main yesterday. I'll post my results.

Quote: then transferred this to a floppy (using mcopy) and put this into my C: on windows (the file (boot.lnx) read as 1kb...is this right?) and referanced it in boot.ini as: c:\boot.lnx="Fedora Core 4" Nope, the boot.lnx file should be 512 bytes, as in; dd if=/dev/hdb1 of=boot.lnx bs=512 count=1 The dd command should have copied the first 512 bytes to a file. OK, but let's try an experiment. This is not the solution. Change the boot order in the bios to the second drive, say HDD0 to HDD1. What happens. If grub loads and works, fine, we can move on. If it does work, see if you can get into Fedora. Then see what happens when you try to get into Windows from grub. I think that we know the answer to this, but let's see what happens. The problem is now that you have tried multiple ways of installing grub, you have grub both on the /boot partition and on the MBR, my guess is, on the hdb drive. I bet on one attempt, you chose the MBR on the hdb drive, not the hda drive.

Failure with installations are either related to hardware issues (mostly other than the cdrom drive) or improperly burned disks. Did you burn any of these disks yourself? If so, did you burn them at a slow speed as noted in my article? Are you booting off of the cd disks, or trying to use the cd disks (DVD) while in Windows (yes, folks have tried to do this)? Give some computer specifications for your system. What is the make and model of your system, or what motherboard make and model do you have? How much ram (memory) is in the system? Quote: I also have this problem with dvd coming from spe[censored]t newspeppers What is this? Is this a publication of some sort?

OK, good...we know more now. First of all, welcome to the Linux world. Try to bear with me, as this question has been asked and answered several times before, related to wireless on SuSE, on these forums. See here for an example. Realize that you are not using Windows, so the common method of installing programs and drivers is a little different in the Linux world. Disregard what you know about Windows right now, but that experience will come in handy later on. Ready? What I have read about your USB adapter is that on the Netgear cd, there should be a directory with Windows XP drivers inside it. The files that you will need are something like; netwpn11.inf + wpn111.sys + ar5523.bin If you find these, copy them from the cd to your home directory. Let me preface what is next with some comments. I have found that the version of ndiswrapper that comes with SuSE may not work correctly, but let's see. Before you begin, do you know what the settings are for your router? For example, do you know; 1. what is your essid for the router? 2. Are you using WEP or WPA encription? Do you have the WEP or WPA password, so that you are allowed to negotiate with your wireless router? Many folks get confused by this, as they don't realize that they need these settings to set up any new OS to use there adapter. 3. Are you using broadband (always connected) or DSL for your internet connection? Many folks also miss the network setup during the installation of SuSE. Did you set up, or try to set up your internet connection during the installation of SuSE? If so, did you try wireless or directly connecting to the router via a network card on your computer? Knowing the answers to these questions will assist us in moving on.

First, we need to know what exact distro and version of Linux that you installed. Mandriva, SuSE, Slackware...? Also, what exact version, 10, 10.1....? If you use ndiswrapper as your driver support package, then you use your Windows XP drivers that come on your netgear driver disk to set up the recognition of the device. What ndiswrapper package did you install? The one that came with your distro, or otherwise? But first, let's see what distro of Linux that you are using.

Oh my God! I can't believe that I missed this! Too many posts from too many folks.... your original grub file; root (hd0,0) kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.15-1.1831_FC4 ro root=LABEL=/ initrd /initrd-2.6.15-1.1831_FC4.img title Fedora Core - Old (2.6.11-1.1369_FC4) #root (hd2,0) root (hd0,0) #kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.11-1.1369_FC4 ro root=LABEL=/ rhgb quiet kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.11-1.1369_FC4 ro root=/dev/hdf4 initrd /initrd-2.6.11-1.1369_FC4.img title Windows XP rootnoverify (hd0,0) chainloader +1 They referenced the same hard drive and partition for Fedora and Windows (red). Plus, the modular bay apparently changes the sequence of how the drives are detected. So, your root= line for Fedora needed to reference exactly where the root filesystem is, with the modular bay inserted (green). Nice work!!!

In order to help and understand what exactly you have done, we need complete descriptions of what you did. Also, what reference did you use to set up dual booting using the boot.ini file? Can you provide a link? There are several methods to add the Linux boot sector to the boot.ini. They can be confusing. But, what you have is the following; 1. Windows XP on your primary master drive. The Windows bootloader is on this drive, where the bios is set to boot from first. 2. You have Fedora on a second hard drive, the primary slave. You chose the default partitioning method during the installation, which places a small boot partition on the second drive. However, the bios is still set to boot from the first drive, so there is no Linux boot, as that bootloader is on the second drive. In order to use the Windows boot.ini, you must correctly reference the /boot partition on the second drive when doing the dd command to copy the Linux bootsector to the boot.lnx file that you placed on your C: drive, or hda1. What exact dd command sequence did you use? Did you reference hdb1, or hdb2? Quote: boot.ini point to multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\Linux......ust gives me totally black screen with HDD light on, no HDD sounds though Where did you get this set of instructions? What is the total line command, as I don't know what \linux.....ust means. Using the raw boot.ini command sequence like this is only correct under certain circumstances. Quote: Lunux Rescue - make a boot.lnx file as in other posts....c;opy to floppy.....put in C: on windows...add to boot.ini.....get black screen with the underscore flashing in the top left (no HDD light) Just getting into linux rescue gives you a command line with a very limited set of command options. It does not mount the total Linux partition. A step in the process is missed. A lot of folks miss this point. If you then did the dd command, what partition did you reference? The /boot partition (hdb1) or the linux partition (hdb2)? Quote: Update Fedora Install.....try and tell it to put GRUB on MBR (i know it says not to)......did not do this as it said no change to kernal ??? A common mistake is also to trash the original installation and start over. Of course, when you said that you told grub to use the MBR, was that hda, or hdb? Where does it say not to do this? Again, are you referencing one article or post, several, or several solutions mentioned on a thread? Excuse me for being so technical and picky, but it's frustrating to see users not stick to one plan. Trying several methods from different sources is not a good idea. Too many folks trash there systems this way.

I think that I may understand better. Neither Mandriva or ubuntu will install? Is this the issue? I assumed you were speaking of the LG problems and compatibility with Linux distros. Before you go buy a new DVD or CDROM drive, please be more detailed with the problem that you are having. If you are having a problem with the install process, then it could be a hardware issue, or you burned the disks incorrectly. To explain the disk burning issue, see my article on the subject here. Again, be more specific about the problem and we can respond more appropriately. [Edited by danleff on 2006-03-23 00:41:51]

I just ordered a 64bit motherboard. Let's see how FC5 does on this. As you probably have seen from the number of posts on dual booting and FC4, FC4 has been giving folks fits with dual booting. I should have the board in Friday next and be able to test it over the weekend.

What utility did you clone the drives with? Remember, by cloning the drives, if this is what you did, you have a bootable MBR or /boot partition on both drives. All grub references for booting and hard drive assignments are the same on the second drive. One clue is to look at what sata drive is actually detected first, as the system boots. In my system, I get a text output of the drive detection order. With both drives connected, is the second drive actually detected first, so that it actually becomes sda?

Quote: I'm getting the same "Cannot find partition" type error, also just getting "GRUB" and nothing else. These are two different errors. The first states that grub can't find the partition referenced. The second is probably that the root /boot/grub files, or the grub /boot partition is no longer there. You did remove the ide drive, where Linux was originally installed, correct? By removing the ide hard drive, you changed the designation of the drives from the original installation of Linux. Grub is confused, as the drive (which had grub files on it) is gone and the hard drive detect order has changed. Where did you install Grub and linux on the original installation, on the MBR of the sata drive? If the ide drive and it is no longer there...this is your answer. However, since you are getting a grub prompt, I assume that at some point you either alllowed Grub to install to a /boot partition, or on the MBR of the sata drive. What drive is set in the bios to boot from first?

There were some problems with older LG drives and Mandrake 9.2, where the problem was first identified. The issue was with LG drives and their compliance with adapti standards. If you are using a recent/newer version of Linux, you should have no problem. Mandriva 2006 should be no problem.

Nice going! have fun!!!

You are making a syntax error when trying to untar the package, or are not at a terminal window as root user. What exact package are you trying to install? Quote: so now i am wondering if i can ever install a GNU You have no graphical interface right now? What distro and version of Linux do you have? Debian?

As I mentioned, YaST is the preferred method. See the referenced article that zenarcher noted above. Note the YaST Configuration section.

Good questions. I'll let you know about XP and Fedora. i just downloaded the Fedora Core 5 DVD image. I also (finally) ordered a 64 bit motherboard. Quote: I know this might be a silly question but I am absolutely new linux so please help. My two cents? Fedora Core 5 is too new for me to comment from experience, but Fedora Core 4 usually gives new users some fits. if you looked at the posts on dual booting issues,you will see what I mean. Personally, I would try Mandriva or SuSE, both which seem to have less problems with dual booting issues. Hopefully, Core 5 has become a little more user friendly for new users of Linux. Quote: My question is can i install fedora x86-64 or any other 64 bit distro ( by resizing my C: drive) while my other os is 32 bit is it possible? will there be any problems in accessing the files in the windows from linux? Too new to tell about Fedora Core 5. I took a quick look at the release notes and such and it did not give much of a clue about mixing 32 bit OS with 64 Fedora. I also did not find any information on NTFS support. For NTFS support, there are RPM packages available that you can install for NTFS read support. See the NTFS Linux Project. If you do go ahead with this, make sure that you pick the 64 bit version of the rpm package, under the Contrib. section (x86_64). You can view and read your XP files in this case, but not write to NTFS volumes. What method of resizing your NTFS partitions are you going to use, something like PartitionMagic, or the onboard utility in XP?

Good to see that you got it going! I just downloaded it using Bittorrent. Took about 10 hours for the DVD! No problem with dual booting XP?

OK, are you trying to configure the connection through Yast, or the iwconfig interface? Do you need a username and password (assigned by your ISP) to login? For example, I use Verizon and need a usernake and password to access the internet connection. The other important point is if you are getting an access point. When you do iwconfig, is the output somethng like; Wlan0 IEEE 802.11 ESSID:"your eesid value" Mode:Managed Frequency:2.462 GHz Access Point: 00:00:00:00:00:00 Bit Rate:1 Mb/s Tx-Power:18 dBm Sensitivity=0/3 Or an actual value, like; wlan0 IEEE 802.11g ESSID:"your essid value" Mode:Managed Frequency:2.437 GHz Access Point: 00:E0:98:F1:4B:86

I see some issues here with the multiple installations that you have tried. Can you post the output of the following command, as root user in Mandriva; fdisk -l That is the small letter "L" after fdisk. If you just installed Mandriva again on the original partition, it should have picked up the Fedora installation, if you had left it intact, which you did not. The last installation using the Grub bootloader usually picks up the previous installations. When you originally installed Fedora, did you allow the Fedora partitioning utility to automatically create the partition scheme on the free space? Since you have a functional system now, let's see what you have, in terms of partitions. The partition idenifiers seem off. I think I may know why.

If you plan on installing the newest version, you need to remove all references to the older one. See the uninstall instruction. Of course, in your case, you used the rpm version, so that needs to be removed in yast, after you remove the old module using ndiswrapper -e bcmwl5. Then make sure that the files in /etc/ndiswrapper are also all gone. At this point, you can install the new version and follow the directions.

I wonder if there is a conflict with another module in SuSE. Take a look at the troubleshooting section of the ndiswrapper wiki and look at the following section; Quote: If ndiswrapper module can be loaded successfully, first unload the module from the kernel if it is already there with 'rmmod ndiswrapper' and then load it again with 'modprobe ndiswrapper'. Now check system messages with 'dmesg'. At the end, you should see messages from ndiswrapper. If everything works fine, you should see something like .. Try unloading the module, reload it and see what the dmesg output shows. It should be at the bottom of the demsg output. Since you use DSL, do you normally need a login name and password to access the internet? If so, you need to set up the card in yast, as an ASDL device connection. This allows you to input your username and password, as well as connect to the wirelesss device.

Hmm...the rdisk value in the windows boot.ini should match the grub entry. Remember, using the map commands reverses the designation of the drives, so they match as if you booted off of the sata drive first. So, if your rdisk value is 0, then, chainloader (hd0,0)+1 My guess is the raid setup has something to do with this problem? What are the drive designations in the Fedora /boot/grub/device.map file? However, there are so many problems here with Fedora's grub (I use SuSE's grub on my system) I wonder what the issue is.

Could you explain the issues that you are having with getting the card to work? It should work with the ndiswrapper package. Are you having issues with getting the card recognized, or setting up the settings for the router?