booting from CD problems
 

on of my servers requires the reinstallation of redhat 7.3 (which is still running presently). all i want to do is reinstal linux. however the server keeps booting up normally...even with the cd in the drive. i can't find a "bootlist" to edit (though i may just not know where to find it). can anyone help me with the reinstallation. is there something i can type in at the "boot" prompt. or is there something i'm required to do to the server before reinstallation. if anyone could help......i would appreciate it.

Quite often, computers are setup to not attempt to boot from CD or floppy. This speeds up the boot time by a few seconds. You probably need to make changes to the BIOS, which gets the computer to the point where it's ready to boot up. When your machine first begins to power up, watch the screen closely for a line like:

Press DEL to enter setup

Sometimes it's the 'delete' key, sometimes one of the function keys (f1, f2, etc.). This line usually appears while the computer is running a memory test or some other basic pre-boot operation. It depends on the manufacturer of your motherboard.

Anyway, press whatever key it asks for, and you should see a primitive GUI BIOS configuration of some sort. From there you'll have to navigate around (the keys used for navigating should be listed at the top, bottom, or side of the screen) until you see a reference to 'boot order' or 'boot devices'. You want to make your CDrom the first boot device. Be sure to have the current boot device (your hard drive, I assume) listed after the CDrom, just in case your computer doesn't like your CD. Exit this configuration screen, being sure to save the changes you made (usually the f10 key is used for 'exit & save').

Your machine will reboot, trying each of the 'boot devices' in the order that they were listed. After you finish the re-install, you can change your BIOS back to skip the CDrom.

Something to keep in mind is that some computers (especially older ones) don't have an option for booting from CDrom, in which case you'll have to make a boot floppy (or floppies). I don't use Redhat, so I can't tell you the exact procedure for this. There should be information about it in the README files on the install disc, or at their website.

Enjoy!
--- Cerbere

i'm assuming i'm gonna have to fdisk and remove the partitions to keep the server from seeing all the "old stuff". how do i do this (i've never had to rebuild a server before). do have to do both the fdisk and the partition removale/redefine before i start the cd-rom installation. or does the red hat installation walk me through both.....?

it shouldn't matter what distro -- as long as the cd is bootable, and the switch is turned on in bios to tell it to boot from a cd -- it'll do it...

you can FDISK all day long, but if it's not set to boot from the CD, you aren't going to really accomplish anything, except blowing everything off your hard drive(s)

do as Cerbere said, check in bios to see if it is turned on to boot from a CD.
If it's off, turn it on --
If you don't have that option, then make a boot floppy and go that route...



RedHat will walk you through partitioning and such.
Don't even bother with fdisking -- because you will then have to format, and that can be time consuming if you have a 80 gig drive. plus You will just be wasting your time because RH will destroy them anyways....
Just make sure you pick automatically partition during installation....
You will get lost in Disk Druid. :P Can we say INFORMATION OVERLOAD.


~~ Netboy

are you saying that i don't have to format or fdisk my server? that just by reinstalling redhat that all my data and settings etc will be "formatted" anyway, and that red hat will walk me through the partitioning? is there a way i could see how the partitions were set up now so to know how to set them up when i start fresh?

http://linux.about.com/library/bl/di...edhat_inst.htm


you have to option to destroy all the partitions and automagically let the new ones be made for you, or you can jump into disk druid and do it yourself. If you don't have a firm grasp on linux partitioning, i'd let it do it for you, because it can get really confusing in there... that's how i do it every time and I have yet to have problems...


Unless you are running a raid or have specific needs -- just let anaconda (the redhat installer) do all the work for you....

Sit back, drink your beer, and watch it go. :D

Maybe we should back up a bit, here.

Why does your server require re-installation of RH 7.3? You do realize that there is now a RH 9, right? What kind of server are we talking about: web server, file server, ... ?

If you plan to wipe out your hard drive and start from scratch, there will be quite a bit of work to do. If this is a working machine in a production environment, can you afford to be without it for possibly as much as a couple of weeks? This process usually doesn't take that long, but (and I don't intend any offense here) for someone who isn't familiar with changing BIOS settings or creating/changing partitions, it's going to be quite an educational experience, to put it euphemistically.

If that's why you're undertaking this project, then I don't want to discourage you; but you should make yourself aware of the amount of work and level of skill involved before you wipe out the server, which you say is still running.

Enjoy!
--- Cerbere

well i was present when we first got everything installed and such....however i was under supervision and had help. this time we do not. so it will truly be an educational experience and a good one. the machine is "running" yes but circumstances require a complete reinstallation and the wiping of all info. luckily this server had not been completely "put to work" yet so to loose it for a time period is ok. (thanks for the warning, and you are quite right in all your estimates). hopefully this will be an educational experience and i will not have to turn back here (lq) too much for guidance. though i must thank you for your help thus far.

with the redhat 9 installer, it's pretty much self-explanatory.
Just follow the prompts and stuff.

If I can teach a windows user to install it and use RH, I know you can do it! :)

ok i've already run into a problem. i've gone to the setup utilities and removed from the set up all but the cd-rom (aka removed c: and a: drives) and when i rebooted i get this error:

no boot device available -
f1 to retry boot f2 for setup utility.

i don't know why it's not reading from the cd....or why it can't see the cd-rom. did i go to the wrong part of the utility to tell it boot from the cd or is setup utilities the wrong option to begin with......(all i did was hit f2 during bootup aka went into setup utilities). i even logged back on and mounted a cd-rom drive (or so i think i did). i used this command.

mount -r -t iso9660 /dev/cdrom /mnt

and then it said:

hda: attached ido-cdrom driver.

which looks like it worked. however like i said i went to the bootup and it said it couldn't find a boot device. any help would be greatly appreciated. i'll be standing by....

make a 3 1/2 boot floppy.... sounds to me like the machine you are trying to install RH on is either older than dirt and the bios doesn't support booting from the cd-rom, or it's turned off. If you have another machine with RH on it, you can make a boot disk from there (easy way) or you can find the images for the diskettes on the 1st cd. You can either make the disks using something like winiso on a winders box, or mount them, but sence you can't boot off the cd, you'll prolly do better just making the disks using a different machine.....

the error message you are getting is a bios generated error message, which basically means bios couldn't find a disk to boot from....

did you make these cds or buy them?

if you make them, you should explode the iso onto the cd, not converting it and then burning it. you will usually lose the boot image if you convert it.

when we first put linux on this machine we used the cd's. so i know it's possible. and it isn't a very old machine. somehow the bios is turned off or or not accepting and i don't know how to fix it. how do i get the bios back on? or where it will recognize it again? like i said ...... it did at once point. oh yeah this disk are purchased not just burned copy. if anyone knows how to get the bios to start recognizing the cd-rom, or if there is a way to edit the bios that i'm not doing.....please help.

well first thing -- what kind of machine is it?
who makes it?
etc etc

sorry it's a power edge 2650 by dell

support.dell.com is your friend.... ;)

normally on dell machines, it tells you what key to smash to get into setup during post. i think it's f1 or it might be delete -- i can't remember..

that machine sure as hell will boot off a cd... i can promise you that!