Post From Fedora

• Posted by B Jones on September 6th, 2006 - Comment on this Post »

I have been wanting to try a Linux operating system for quite some time now, and I finally did it. This post is being written from Firefox running on the Fedora Core 5 OS. I installed it along side Windows XP (on a 2nd hard drive), and it definitely wasn’t easy. There were many roadblocks along the way, but it was definitely worth it.

I thought it might be good if I documented some of the problems I came across, and the solutions that I found. Maybe it will save someone else the headache.

IMPORTANT: This installation was done on a compaq presario with a second hard drive added and completely formatted before beginning. It was kind of a spare computer, so I wasn’t worried if anything went wrong. You should probably backup your data before trying to install linux.

Problem: After creating the set of install disks, starting up from them, and getting to the install menu, Fedora would start to run, then it would just quit and restart back to windows.

Solution:
When you start from the Linux cd, below the list of installation options is a command prompt. I typed linux acpi=off and then press enter. That got me into the main installation.

Problem: The first time I installed linux, I installed the Grub Bootloader on to the 2nd (new) hard drive with linux. I couldn’t get linux to boot.
Solution: When installing Linux on a 2nd hard drive, install Grub on the MBR (Master Boot Record). This is on the main hard drive with windows.

Problem: More problems with Grub and bootloader:
After going through the installation process, I couldn’t get Fedora to boot. A program that is supposed to boot linux at startup was overwritten somehow.

Solution:
You need to insert the Fedora rescue cd and start from that. At the install menu, I had to type: linux acpi=off linux rescue to get the rescue disk to load. That gets you to a command prompt. From there you will need to set up grub.

I ran the grub program: grub then entered something like this
grub> root (hd0,1)
grub> setup (hd0)
grub> quit

However, you will need to figure out which hd to do this with. For me, hd0 was the master drive (MBR) with windows installed.

Here’s a good reference:
http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/4622

That was the bare minimum to get FC5 up and running.

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