I got several error messages while trying to install Fedora Core 1. I wanted to try Fedora. For over a year, I have used Red Hat 9 as my main OS which is installed on my second harddrive. I have two 160 GB Maxstor DiamondMax Plus harddrives, so finding room for Fedora was not a problem. I left my two copies of Red Hat 9 installed.

I inserted the Fedora Core 1 installation CD and saw what looked like the same familiar installation program I had used with Red Hat 7.3, Red Hat 8.0 and Red Hat 9. Before long I received my first error message. This is the error message:

"Invalid partition table on /dev/hdb -wrong signature 0

I was surprised that it was complaining about hdb because my two copies of Red Hat 9 are installed on that drive. I pressed cancel and the installation program continued. I then chose the Custom Install option and Disk Druid. Then I received this next long error message:

The partition table on drive hdb was unreadable. To create new partitions it must be initialized, causing the loss of ALL DATA on this drive. This operation will override any previous installation choices about which drives to ignore. Would you like to initialize this drive, erasing ALL DATA?

I clicked on "No". I did not want to lose my two working copies of Red Hat 9. Disk Druid then showed me what was on my other hard drive which is hda. I hoped that it could at least handle my first harddrive. I choose to reformat 3 empty unused partitions on hda as ext3 partitions. I used hda3 as my "/" partiton. It is an 8 GB primary partition. I chose 3 logical partitions on hda for /home, /usr, and swap. I also chose to have grub installed on the first sector of my boot partion instead of using the MBR. I have always done it that way because Partition Magic uses the MBR. I then received this error message:

An error occured when attempting to load an installer inferface component.
className = FirewallWindow

At that point I attempted to stop the installation and then spotted this error message among other messages in a black text mode screen:

Cannot import name Firewall Window

My main copy of Red Hat 9 is still working and I am using it at the moment. Here is a list of some of my hardware:

Soyo KT400 Dragon Ultra Platinum Plus
VIA KT400 chipset
AMD Athlon XP 2600+ with 333 MHz bus
1 GB of Mushkin PC 3200 DDR RAM (running at the 333 MHz PC 2700 speed)
Two 160 GB Maxtor Diamond Max Plus Ultra ATA harddrives on IDE 1 and IDE 2
Phoenix Award BIOS K7VX4-2AA3
430 Watt ATX power supply
PNI Verto GeForce2 MX 400 AGP video card with 64 MB SDRAM
Two DVD-ROM / CD-RWs connected to IDE 3 and IDE 4

There is no brand name for this computer because I put it together myself from misc parts over a year ago. I am not a technician. I tried installing Fedora twice, once with the onboard IDE RAID enabled from the BIOS and once with it disabled. There is nothing connected to IDE 5, IDE 6, IDE 7, and IDE 8 which all 4 can be used for RAID. I mention that detail because in the past Red Hat 9 was the only distro that could be installed when they were enabled. Does anyone have any suggestions?

I just noticed something else. I exited Red Hat 9, rebooted and used Partition Magic to look at my partitions. System Commander and Partition Magic come up before I choose which operating system to start. Well anyway, it showed that none of the partitions had been reformated. I could tell that because hda3 was still an unformated BeOS partition and hda5 and hda6 were still ReiserFS partitions. I had told the Fedora C 1 installation program to reformat them all as ext3 partitons. There was already an hda7 swap partition.

I wonder what would happen if I use Red Hat 9 to format those partitions before trying to install install Fedora C 1. In Disk Druid I could then choose the option of not formating the partions. Another possibility is to install a 3rd copy of Red Hat 9 on hda and then try to upgrade that.

It is now installed and working. The trick was to not let Fedora Core 1 try to create or fomat the partions. I used Partion Magic and Red Hat 9 to do that. I used Partion Magic to create the hda3 partion and format it as Ext3. I also already had the two leftover ReiserFS partions on hda5 and hda6 that I could reuse. So I temporarily mounted the two ReiserFS partions using Red Hat 9 and deleted everything on both partitions.

I then tried to Install Fedora Core 1 again and I still got the first couple of error messages and selected Cancel or No in each case. I then ran Disk Druid and selected the partitions that were to be used for "/", /home, /usr and swap. In each case I chose the option of not formating the partion and to preserve the data on it. From then on everything worked perfectly and I was able to install Fedora Core 1.

I am now using Fedora Core 1 to post this message. The lesson that I have learned is to not let the Fedora Core 1 installation program create or format partitions on my computer. I will save that task for Partition Magic or Red Hat 9.

A few minutes ago I was reading the February 2004 issue of Linux Magazine and was surprised to see the exact same problem mentioned. They were talking about Fedora Core 1 on page 29 when they said this:

The partitioning software, which comes from Red Hat, may have trouble with larger disks. If the boot partition is not within the first 1024 cylinders of the disk, the program cannot read the partition table, and suggests re-initializing - that is deleting - the whole disk. You can work around this issue by using a different program to partition you disk manually, however.

Well, these posts were a nice conversation that I had with myself today.