Fedora Installation - Kernel Panic before Anaconda
 

My mother in-law kindly gave me the RedHat Fedora Linux 2 Bible for my birthday (cool huh). Fedora is the one distro I haven't tried.

Here's the problem. I reboot the 'puter with the CD in the tray, and the install menu comes up, I press 'enter'.
Shortly after I receive this

Ramdisk: Compressed image found at block 0
crc error
VFS: Cannot open root device "<NULL>" or unknown block (72.3)
Please append a correct "root=" boot option
Kernel Panic: VS unable to mount root fs on unknown block

In the past, Suse 9.0 and 9.1 have had similar problems and I've need to install them off floppy disks. However, this doesn't work with fedora core 2 now, and anyway, I don't have a floppy disk drive anymore.

It's -not- the media. I think with my system it struggles to read kernels off cds, but I'm not sure. I hit the same sort of problem with Gnoppix. Knoppix, however, always works a charm (naturally :-> )

I tried passing
linux root=/dev/hdc
and we got further along but then it dies with something about trying to add init=option or something. if it helps i can go write down the error message.

Are there any known issues with this? A couple of people out there seem to be having similar issues, but no one seems to have been able to help. I'd like to look at fedora, particularly now as I finally have a good reference book - i could maybe learn more than Ive had time to so far.

if anyone could help, then that'd be great.

k.

You could try passing the boot option [cpde]hdb=nodma[/code] (replacing hdb with your actual CD-ROM device name); this will clear some problems some CD-ROM drive(r)s have with DMA.

If you have another machine handy, you could also try a network-based install.

Thanks - but alas, that doesn't help.

linux root=/dev/hdc hdc=nodma

we get down to

VFS: Mounted root (iso9660 filesystem) readonly
freeing unused Kernel memory:144k freed
Warning: unable to open an initial console
Kernel panic: No init found
Try passing init=option to Kernel

I'd like to try a network install but I'm here in the house by myself for a few weeks without other 'puters around.

I've seen other hdd based solutions, but they assume you have fedora or redhat installed already. It seems that I'd have to download the 4 isos again, stick them in /boot - copy the kernel off the cd into /boot, set up GRUB to load them, and somehow they'd automatically start booting from the first Fedora core 2 iso.
I tried this in my hdd installed knoppix, but it didnt seem to work alas 'tho I may have done something wrong. I guess it has to be done in redhat or fedora core 1. I'm still pretty much a novice.

Actually, the network install was a good idea. I did some reading up on it. Anyone who can't install off a cd should take a look here.

http://www.johnwyles.com/archives/20...rk_install.php