error on fedora core 2 installation

[quantz 0]

plzz help me, when i'm installing fedora core 2 i get a warning like this:

 

"unable to align partition properly. this probably means that another partitioning tool generated an incorrect partition table, because it didn't have the correct BIOS geometry. it is safe to ignore, but ignoring may cause (fixable)problem with some boot loader"

 

when i click ignore the installion run normally but when i boot the computer there is no boot loader to choice either to boot with xp or fedora, before that i have win xp on my computer, i plan to use 2 OS, xp and linux, so how can i solve this problem

[danleff 0]

I'm afraid that you have fallen prey to the FC2 partition issue, which has been reported for some time.

 

Did you choose a bootloader during the install, such as Grub to the MBR, or make a floppy boot disk. The answer to recovery depends on if you made a boot floppy or installed grub.

 

Let us know what you have. If you have a method to get into Fedora, then it can be fixed from the Fedora command line.

 

Whenever you receive such a message during an install, you should abort and seek what the issue is.

 

FC2 sees the partitions on the drive differently than windows. So, the grub bootloader attempts to set variables different than what windows recognizes in the MBR.

 

Do you have your Windows install CD? Hopefully your system does not have XP pre-installed and you don't have the cd.

 

What you need to do is fix the MBR.

 

First, in the bios, try setting the drive in question to LBA mode, rather than auto or CHS. Then try to boot the system. Hopefully you get the grub bootloader and can get into XP or Fedora.

 

Note. Please, check what access mode you realy normal use to access disk. Changing access mode from Large to LBA for example can lead to lose data from your disk!

 

 

If this does not fix the boot issue, then you will need the XP cd to get into the recovery console.

 

How to do this is described in a Microsoft article here.

 

When in the recovery console, you need to run fixmbr and fixboot.

 

This should restore the MBR and you should be able to get into Windows. We can then go from there.

 

References:

 

 

 

http://www.fedoraforum.org/forum/showthread.php?s=&postid=14703

 

http://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=115980

[Dapper Dan 0]

I have fallen victim as well and didn't even know it! I tried to be conservative, and only use 5 gigs for the / partition for Core2. This has turned out not to be enough for my experimentation. I then tried to icrease it's size with QTparted, and got the same error! QTparted won't offer me the chance to use it to resize my Core2 partition, so I guess I'll just have to install it over from scratch.

 

Should I use QTparted to delete that partition and create another, then install Fedora Core 2 to it? Or should I use the Core 2 partitioning tool again?

[Laffen 0]

Hi

I fixed very easy by booting knoppix or another livecd linux

and typed the following in the console

dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hda bs=1000 count=1000

This will write zeros to the mbr so it will apear as brand new

and now you have LBA not CHS

Enjoy

 

[danleff 0]

Originally posted by quantz:

Quote:

when i click ignore the installion run normally but when i boot the computer there is no boot loader to choice either to boot with xp or fedora, before that i have win xp on my computer, i plan to use 2 OS, xp and linux, so how can i solve this problem

 

 

The problem here, if quantz is articulating his problem correctly, is that he has no bootloader at all?

 

Writing zeros to the MBR - does this not wipe the MBR and leave one with no bootloader? You still have to have a way to install a bootloader, be it Grub or Lilo, or to use the XP recovery console to re-write the bootloader to the MBR?

 

I may be off on this one.

 

Dapper Dan, I too ran into troubles with Qtparted. The problem is a catch 22. Finding a method to create a proper ext3 or whatever filesystem to install Fedora to before pointing Fedora to install on the pre-fomatted partition.

 

PartitionMagic gave me the corrupted drive errors and bombed out. I have to think how I to did this. Upgrading Fedora is not problematic, as it uses the already existing partiton to upgrade to. No partition creating with the Fedora's utility, therefore no problem with the apparent partition corruption (or whatever we want to call it).

[dcarrco 0]

hello. i had xp on my machine and installed fedora core 2

it gave me the same message as the guy at the top got.

now, it will boot fedora fine, but wont boot the xp partition.

how can i fix this?

[danleff 0]

Blackpage posted the link to the official Fedora page and it's fix LOCATED HERE in another thread.

[Dapper Dan 0]

Anyone know if sfdisk only comes with Core 2? I don't seem to have it under Core 1. Wait a minute...

 

Yep, as I figured.

 

With RedHat/Fedora, if using "su", there are certain utilities that reside in /sbin and aren't symlinked in /usr/bin, thus, instead of going as su:

 

sfdisk -d /dev/hda

 

you have to go:

 

/sbin/sfdisk -d /dev/hda

 

Otherwise you get, "command not found."

 

 

 

 

[martouf 0]

whatever you do, DO NOT do the 'dd' command suggested by Laffen

unless you really want to trash much more than the MBR.

 

'bs=1000 count=1000' means 1000*1000 bytes written --

and the MBR just by itself is 512 bytes.

 

You'll trash the MBR, the partition table and the first part of the filesystem.