fletchjp

Thanks for this as I have a Netgear WG511T and have yet to get it working with Linux. I now have the pointer for madwifi which I didn't have before, and also the hint that SuSE Linux 9.2 may have some updates. What isn't mentioned is if there is any difference with 64 bit Linux. I have an AMD64 laptop running SuSE Linux 9.2 (64 bit). I am therefore wary of recompiling support software as things can get installed in different locations such as lib64 instead of lib on the 64 bit systems. Any thoughts? Thanks John

I have already sent this to the SuSE support. Quote: PRODUCT: SuSE Linux AMD64 9.2 Professional I am attempting a first install onto a laptop Evesham Micros AMD64 3400 The installation hangs during an early phase shorlty after a line which says >>> SUSE Linux installation v 1.7.17 Starting hardware detection at a line "Activating PCMCIA devices..." even when there is no device in the slot. It does the same with Netgear wireless card installed I cannot see any way to disable PCMCIA in the BIOS setup, which was my only thought as to how to get around this. Can anyone help, please? John

It does all work - I can boot to Windows XP (SP2) SuSE Linux 9.2 (64 bit) Fedora Core 3 (32 bit - although I would like it to be 64 bit) Although I have answered my own query, having this community to work with has helped me to sort it out. Thanks for being there John

I think I am now getting somewhere with this but it has got somewhat complicated. I will share it while SuSE 9.2 (64 bit) is loading. This has now become a Triple Boot system. (1) I started with Windows XP and a big (80 Gbyte) NTFS partition with plenty of spare space. I carved off 20 Gbytes at the far end using Partition Magic. I was going to put SuSE there - see above. (2) In fact I installed Fedora Core 3 in there. I was able to tell it what I wanted as default (Windows XP) and choose the software I wanted. When I looked at it with Partition Magic it had used the space to make two primary partitions, one for /boot and one for a LV setup containing the swap and the /root. (3) I then did a yum update which took about two hours. In the process it loaded a new version of the kernel and decided it wanted that to be default. So I had to get into /boot and edit grub.conf to teach it good manners. (Worse is to come). (4) I now decided to install SuSE after all using manual installation. Some experiments showed that I can get round the PCMCIA problem that way. So I am into the delights of YaST. (5) For my first try I let YaST suggest what it wanted to do with the disk. I expected it would do something silly such as overwrite the Fedora, but no, it just wanted to take 25 Gbytes from Windows. So I did that job for it with Partition Magic and gave it 20 Gbytes. It accepts that and puts its swap and root into an extended partition. Fine. (6) The problem is the way Yast wants to handle Grub. Although it knows the Fedora partitions are there none of the YaST options will copy in the boot menu from Fedora. I have had to manually edit it the two versions of the Fedora boot menu so that all the options will be there. (7) Software packages. YaST does not give a full list of the options e.g. it assumes that gcc is there for C and C++ and ignores FORTRAN and objective C. There are some other things I want which I am going to have to dig out afterwards. (8) Finally, will it be 64 bit? I expected it to ask me which I wanted, but it has silently done its thing without asking me. I just hope it all works. I hope this helps someone else. I wonder what will happen next time the Fedora Core wants to update its kernel. My guess is that it will modify its own grub.conf which will not be the one in action. I think the moral of the story is that everyone who does a distribution assumes that theirs will be the only one on the computer and that nothing else matters. The next installment will be if it doesn't work. John

Its funny. Fedora Core 3 (32 bit) does not have this problem and is currently instralling. Its a funny old world.

Re the broken packages - there have been a lot of updates lately for both FC 2 and FC 3. Have you tried yum list updates to see what it thinks is out of date? Then either do yum update to load what it wants to do to update your system, or selectively update individual items. I have found that not all the mirror sites have all the files, so adjusting the yum.conf to a good mirror near you is a good idea. Best wishes John

One thing which you could try which does not require a partition of the hard disk is to install coLinux. (See http://www.colinux.org/ ) It is not itself a distribution, but a way of running a Linux distribution as a task within either Windows XP or Windows 2000. The task shares the cpu with Windows, so it is not the thing if you need power computing. I now use it much more than I do dual booting. I am currently running mine with Fedora 2, but there are other distributions available. John P.S. If you go for this look at the snapshots at http://www.colinux.org/snapshots/ rather than 0.6.1 which is rather dated.

I have a new computer with an Athlon 64 bit CPU. It has come with Windows XP (now SP2). I want to split the hard disk and dual boot with Fedora Core 2 (64 bit version). Has anyone experience of doing this and any comments on what to watch for? Thanks John

Thanks for that, Danleff One of the messages listed was started by myself back in August when I had problems adding Windows XP to my dual boot (Windows ME and Fedora 1) system. That is one of the reasons I am cautious now. I do need to partition the disk, which came new with NTFS and one big partition. Thanks for the hint to defrag it first. I shall then look at it with Partition Magic 8.0, I think. At the moment I have coLinux ( http://www.colinux.org/ )running using Fedora Core 2. I find this more convenient than dual boot these days unless I need the raw power of the computer, as the cpu is shared between windows and Linux. Thanks again John

When Fedora 1 boots I get a lot of modprobe messages "cannot find block-major-nnn" for various nnn. These happen when it is checking for new hardware. This does not prevent the system booting but it would be nice to stop this. I have searched on Google and not found this exact problem. It may be relevant that I installed Fedora 1 as an upgrade to Red hat 9, in turn upgraded from Red Hat 8, so there may be some contamination. I now maintain using yum. Any thoughts? Thanks John

I had a dual boot system with Windows ME and Fedora Core 1, both on disk 1 (60 Gbyte), controlled by GRUB in the MBR of disk 1. I wanted to add in Windows XP, to be able to run coLinux, which does not run on Windows ME. What I have now is a dual boot Windows ME and Windows XP and I can only get to the Fedora Core 1 using its boot floppy. What is in the MBR now was put there by Windows XP. How did this happen? (1) I have used Partition Magic 8.0 to make space for the Windows XP partition. This all went O.K. (2) Partition Magic 8.0 recommended BootMagic 8.0 to help set up the booting of the new operating system. So I installed it. When I did so it immediately removed the previous GRUB information from the MBR, and only identified the Windows ME. It did this with no warning despite saying that it "supports GRUB" on the box. (3) The install of Windows XP involved recreating the partition created for it by Partition Magic. At the end of that BootMagic was disabled and replaced by Windows XP stuff. I have tried (1) Reconfiguring BootMagic which now only sees Windows ME and not XP. (2) Using the install DVD for Fedora Core 1 and reinstalling GRUB. I go through the dialogue and attempt to tell it about Windows XP but it doesn't install. Please, what else can I do? I feel let down by BootMagic 8. Partition Structure of Disk 1 C: Windows ME FAT32 primary 13 Gbytes L: Windows XP NTFS primary 20 Gbytes E: FAT32 logical 7 Gbytes /boot FC1 Ext3 logical small / FC1 Ext3 logical 13.5 Gbytes swap FC1 Ext3 logical 1 GByte D,F,G,H,I small partions on a second 10 Gbyte drive J,K CD/RW and DVD Any suggestions will be appreciated. John Fletcher

Solved Rebooted from Fedore Core 1 DVD into linux rescue Answered a few questions. Then the commands # chroot /mnt/sysimage # grub-install /dev/hda # exit # exit as suggested in the other thread. The twist. Now everything boots BUT the two versions of Windows are accessed via my old Windows ME option, which then gives a second choice between Windows ME and Windows XP. I guess that the code for that is at the start of the partition for Windows ME My next action? Delete BootMagic from the system. Thanks everyone, and I hope this helps someone else. John

I am currently running the Fedora system (booted from the startup disk) and was contemplating running grub as root at the command line. That seemed from the manual to be a risky procedure. The thread you reference gives the alternative of booting from the CD (DVD in my case) and then using linux rescue. SO in that case I would do # chroot /mnt/hda6 (for my /boot) # grub-install /dev/hda # exit # exit I am running the webbrowsing on a different computer! Thanks John

Thanks for the response. I am attempting to make sense of the manuals for the grub command. I have found /boot/grub/grub.conf which contains what was being used before and I have edited it to add an entry for Windows XP on hd(0,1). So all I need to do now is to install it in the MBR on the first disk. My /boot is /dev/hda6 according to the df command. So I think the grub commands should be root (hd0,5) setup (hd0) quit Is that O.K. ? Thanks John