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Old 09-07-2009, 07:31 PM   #1
KB18
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Fedora 11, question about Grub.


Hello,

I am going to try to install Fedora 11 on my PC, it has Windows XP (C drive) and a recovery part (D drive). My plan is to use Gparted to shrink the C drive and then use Fedora 11's live CD to install on the free part of the hard drive.
The only thing I am not sure on what to do is, where to install the bootloader Grub, should I install it to the default place where Fedora says too? And if I install it to the default place, will it pick up XP or will I have to change anything else in Grub?

Thank you for any help
 
Old 09-07-2009, 08:50 PM   #2
ronlau9
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Quote:
Originally Posted by KB18 View Post
Hello,

I am going to try to install Fedora 11 on my PC, it has Windows XP (C drive) and a recovery part (D drive). My plan is to use Gparted to shrink the C drive and then use Fedora 11's live CD to install on the free part of the hard drive.
The only thing I am not sure on what to do is, where to install the bootloader Grub, should I install it to the default place where Fedora says too? And if I install it to the default place, will it pick up XP or will I have to change anything else in Grub?

Thank you for any help
My opinion the default place for GRUB is in MBR
You can install GRUB in the root partition of Fedora and use boot.ini to boot fedora
AS you're intending to install FEdora 11 make the / partition ext3 and the
rest ext4 .
GRUB can not read from ext4
 
Old 09-08-2009, 05:37 AM   #3
decrepit
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I haven't installed fedora 11 yet but all the earlier versions haven't "picked up" any other OSs. I've had to manually add them to the grub menu, /boot/grub/grub.conf

This isn't hard and it's well documented, there's been plenty of threads here over the years, just do a search.

There is a standard line in grub that can work if windows is on the same hard drive.
 
Old 09-09-2009, 01:14 AM   #4
KB18
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Hello,

Thank you both for the quick replies.

I have ran into a problem again, when I try to boot the Live CD for Fedora, after it gives the countdown to when it will boot it will just sit at a black screen with a blinking cursor. However on the same computer I can run the Live CD and install it with no problems on a virtual machine.

Why would it run on the the virtual machine but not on my computer? Any ideas on how to help fix this problem?

My computer details.
Intel Pentium 4 processor 3.06GHz
1GB RAM
Graphics card, NVIDIA GeForce FX 5500, 256MB of memory.
If you need anything else please let me know.



Also one other thing, I don't know if it has something to do with it or not. When I installed the new graphics card I did not disable the old one in the BIOS, the old graphics card is built into the motherboard.
 
Old 09-09-2009, 03:00 AM   #5
ronlau9
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Disable the old graphic card in the BIOS.
One of the reason that it hangs could be that it is confused because of
two garphic cards.
 
Old 09-09-2009, 09:16 AM   #6
fpmurphy
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If disabling the second card does not work, try adding vga=ask to the kernel boot command. This will display a list of available screen modes for you to select an appropriate one.
 
Old 09-10-2009, 01:57 AM   #7
KB18
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I looked in the BIOS for the old graphics card and could not find anything. Am I just looking in the wrong spot or is it already gone?
Quote:
try adding vga=ask to the kernel boot command. This will display a list of available screen modes for you to select an appropriate one.
I will try that after I figure out what to do with the BIOS.
 
Old 09-11-2009, 01:52 AM   #8
KB18
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I tryed the "vga=ask" command, after I picked my mode it started to load (the bottom of the screen with the white and blue line) and then it gave me a error.
Quote:
mount: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/sr0
There was a few other things that came up after the above, if you need me to get the rest please let me know.
 
Old 09-11-2009, 05:59 AM   #9
decrepit
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did you do as your first replier suggested.
Quote:
>>>>>
AS you're intending to install FEdora 11 make the / partition ext3 and the
rest ext4 .
GRUB can not read from ext4
 
Old 09-12-2009, 01:06 AM   #10
KB18
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Quote:
did you do as your first replier suggested.
No, can't do that when Fedora won't load from the live CD.
 
Old 09-12-2009, 01:27 AM   #11
JulianTosh
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Just use the F11 disk to install Linux... when you get to the disk layout step, there's an option to shrink an existing partition... Select that and the F11 install process will do everything for you flawlessly. I've done this 2 times now over XP installs and it works great*.

* for me. backup your shizzle. not responsible for farked drives. enter at your own risk.
 
Old 09-12-2009, 05:03 PM   #12
mejohnsn
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Quote:
Originally Posted by KB18 View Post
No, can't do that when Fedora won't load from the live CD.
Won't load at all? That's weird. If it won't load from the live CD, why do you think an Install from the CD will work?

Or did you mean to say it won't Install from the live CD?

But I do have to agree with another poster: better to install from the Fedora 11 DVD. That way, you have access to a great many relatively up to date packages before you even have to use the network.

In my case, it was a necessity, since the liveCD did not even recognize my wifi (802.11) card. But after installing from the DVD, Fedora 11 recognized my wifi card with no effort on my part.

You will still want to do a lot of system/software/package upgrades even after using that DVD. They take a long time even over a fast network connection.

Finally, you can let the installer decide where to put Grub. If you start the installer (anaconda) with enough space on your drive that is not allocated to any partition, it will go ahead and make a boot partition, mount it as '/boot', and you will find grub/grub.conf there. You don't even have to think about it.
 
Old 09-13-2009, 01:35 AM   #13
KB18
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Quote:
Just use the F11 disk to install Linux
How do I do that when it will not load? I select the option to boot and it will not.
 
Old 09-14-2009, 03:45 PM   #14
mejohnsn
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Lightbulb

Quote:
Originally Posted by KB18 View Post
How do I do that when it will not load? I select the option to boot and it will not.
You are right. You cannot, when it will not load. But this is the problem. What is really going on here? Failure to load at all from the CD or DVD sounds like a hardware problem: either a bad disk or an unreliable drive.

I think what we are going to need is a more precise description of exactly what it is you did when "it will not load". And then we may find that it really is a hardware problem, for which you are more likely to get a good answer in another thread or forum.

In particular, how were you trying to load it? Were you already running a version of Linux when you tried to load it? Or were you booting the machine from the BIOS boot menu? If the latter, which BIOS? How did you tell it to boot from the CD/DVD? Does your BIOS support booting from both CD and DVD? Do you hear the CD drive spin up at all?

Very occasionally, the CD drive on one of my laptop gets stuck. This happened the first time I tried to install Ubuntu, which left me worrying that Ubuntu had trashed my disk. But it turned out all I needed to do was pull the battery, put it back after a few seconds, and turn power back on with the CD in the drive. This time the CD behaved long enough to complete successful installation of Ubuntu.

Your best bet, tedious though it may sound, is to tell us your exact steps from power up to the point when you decide that the disk is not even loading, much less booting. And please tell us which BIOS you are using.

It wouldn't hurt to include (in the same post) the General tab you see after right-click on My Computer, then Properties.

Finally, if you miss the BIOS version displayed during startup from power off condition, you can find it by following the instructions at http://www.watchingthenet.com/how-to...n-windows.html. But be very careful not to change any Registry setting while following these instructions.
 
Old 09-18-2009, 01:30 AM   #15
KB18
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Sorry I did not get back sooner, I have been very busy.
Quote:
how were you trying to load it?
Burned the image to a CD-RW using InfraRecorder, and then put the CD in my computer and rebooted.
Quote:
Were you already running a version of Linux when you tried to load it?
No.
Quote:
Or were you booting the machine from the BIOS boot menu? If the latter, which BIOS? How did you tell it to boot from the CD/DVD? Does your BIOS support booting from both CD and DVD?
Not sure what you mean on this. I have it set in the BIOS to boot from the CD-ROM first.
Quote:
Do you hear the CD drive spin up at all?
Yes, when it is trying to load. Then it stops spinning and gives me those errors.
Quote:
Very occasionally, the CD drive on one of my laptop gets stuck. This happened the first time I tried to install Ubuntu, which left me worrying that Ubuntu had trashed my disk. But it turned out all I needed to do was pull the battery, put it back after a few seconds, and turn power back on with the CD in the drive. This time the CD behaved long enough to complete successful installation of Ubuntu.
I am using a Desktop.
Quote:
Your best bet, tedious though it may sound, is to tell us your exact steps from power up to the point when you decide that the disk is not even loading, much less booting.
I put the CD in my CD drive and then reboot my computer, when the Fedora menu comes up I click the "Tab" button on my keyboard and type in this command "vga=ask". Then start to boot it, I then select my screen setting and then it will start to load. Most of the time I see the blue and white line on the bottom of the screen start to move to the right and then the screen goes black (and the CD-ROM drive stops spinning) and then gives me a error. It is something like this, if you need it I will boot it up again today and get the whole error.
mount: wrong fs type
bad superblock dev/sr0

bug in initramfs /init detected

Quote:
And please tell us which BIOS you are using.
I will try to get that info soon.
Quote:
It wouldn't hurt to include (in the same post) the General tab you see after right-click on My Computer, then Properties.
System:
Microsoft Windows XP
Home Edition
Version 2002

Hewlett Packard
Pavilion
Intel{R}
Pentium{R} 4CPU 3.06GHz
3.06GHz, 0.99 GB of RAM
Physical Address Extension



Thank you for any help.
 
  


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