Problem installing Fedora 13 Live Desktop Edition
 

I am new to Linux all together but have developed an interest in learning the os. I have been attempting to install Fedora 13 Live Desktop Edition. However, every time I boot off the cd I receive an error message stating--"mount: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/mapper/live-rw, missing codepage or helper program, or other error. In some cases useful info is found in syslog - try dmesg | tail or so. Can't mount root filesystem. Boot has failed, sleeping forever."

Possibly a bad CD? You might want to run an md5 checksum on it to ensure that the CD wasn't corrupted during download. You're saying that it is saying this when you try to boot it live correct? Or did you already install after viewing the live version and get this error?

Installation error reply
 

Yes, this occurs after the disc boots up and makes it past the initial splash screen where the blue and white bars scroll across the bottom of the screen. Another person told me the same thing you suggested in that the download was probably corrupted.

Have you recently installed hardware such as upgrading RAM or installing a new hard drive before running the disk?

If so and this happens to you with different distros then your motherboard may need a BIOS update. That would be the next recommended step if that is what you are experiencing.

Fedora 13 installation problem
 

No, I haven't installed any new hardware and this is on a Dell server and a clean hard drive. I downloaded another copy of the iso file and now I am getting a slightly different error message. Now it says- "mount: you must specify the filesystem type. Can't mount root filesystem. Boot has failed, sleeping forever."

How about taking the CD out and booting up the machine. Is it giving you the same message?

I've accidentally left a floppy drive and, more recently, a flash drive in my computer. Depending on the boot order it interfered with my boot process.

Try downloading a different variety of Linux and see if you get an error upon boot with alternate distros so we narrow the problem to either being your computer or just Fedora.

Try Damn Small Linux (~50MB quick download) or Ubuntu and see what happens.

Hi, I had the same problem here, but solved it by installing the image to a memory stick, using the live-usb-creator.

There's a couple of ways you can go about that... You can use dd to install it to a USB disk. WARNING: make sure the usb disk is empty because this method will destroy all data on the USB stick. /deb/sdX is your flash drive and this command is run in a terminal.

If you don't have access to the dd command (Unix/Linux only) or you don't want to then use a netboot installer. This is non-destructive to your flash drive (as in won't kill your data). But make a backup copy of data if needed!

http://unetbootin.sourceforge.net/