On a two drive dual boot I installed FC4 on hdb only to get an error saying that no Kernel was found (or something similar) after it was through with the install so it doesn't install GRUB. I had an identical problem with FC4Test3, but I thought it would be hammered out by the actual release. FC3 installs fine.

I used the Automatic partition, but told it only hdb and then installed a 16GB VFAT partiton so I could transfer files from my my Windows instalation.

Did you perhaps change the partition numbers used by GRUB when you created the FAT partition? The message you report happens when the "boot (hd#, #)" line has the wrong hd# or partition #.

Have you tried "linux rescue" from your CD/DVD? Can it find your installation? If it can, check the hd# and partition #, and make sure it's what GRUB is using. If it can't, you failed to install properly and need to reinstall.

GRUB is not installing at all. When I rebooted Windows came up. It points to the partition with the root (/) as the location for the Linux install and then says that it won't install GRUB because no kernel was found. The message flashes for about two seconds so I can't get the full text of it. (Especally since I went to a movie whaile it was installing.) I'm remembering the message from when FC4Test3 was doing it.

Sorry, I've been occupied with other things.

Anyhow, did you try the "linux rescue" option from your FC4 DVD? (Or rescue CD, if you don't have theDVD.) Did it find the instalation?

Have you tried installing GRUB on a floppy and booting from it? (I've found it usefull to have a boot floppy around since my HDs overheat sometimes, and, when a HD fails, the drive numbering, of course, changes.)

Look at my post here for ways to reinstall GRUB and create a GRUB boot floppy.

It doesn't install a /boot/grub/ directory.

I'm not going to worry about it too much until I make it a single boot Linux box in a few months.

I see. Well, FC4 (and, I believe, most other Linux distros) need -- or, at least, like to have -- three partitions for installation: A "swap" partition, a "boot" partition, and a "root" (i.e. "/") partition. Fedora can put the swap and root into a single ext3 logical volume set, so only needs -- or, "would like to have" -- two partitions.

It sounds like you may have set up your system on a "pre-defined" partition rather then just deleting the partition before installing, and letting the install process partition the "unpartitioned space" during the install. If that'e what you did, "/boot" should be an actual "sub-directory," to use MS terms, in the same partition as your "/" file systems instead of on its own ext2 partition. That may be why GRUB has a problem finding it, although I thought GRUB could handle ext3 file systems too.

My FC4 system is on hdb, and fdisk -l /dev/hdb looks like this for me:Note that the first partition (not avtive) is a Win2k server, so I'd assume your hda setup would look quite similar to my hdb one above if you'd used the default installation procedure (as I did for my installation).

Currently both hda and hdb are NTFS with hdb being used as a drive for my backup file. What I've been doing is completely wiping hdb and using it for the Linux install leaving hda and my WinXP install alone (other than the MBR for installing GRUB). I've been adding a FAT partiton to allow WinXP to do it's daily backup and to transfer files from the WinXP side to the FC4 side and vice versa.

I've been partitioning hdb with hdb1 as /boot hdb2 as /vfat and hdb3 as the logical volume. (Or whatever the default order is) When it goes to install GRUB it looks at hdb3 and says that "no kernel is found so GRUB will not be loaded" so something very similar. When I was having trouble with Test 3 I manually made the swap and root partitions rather than used the logical partition and still had the same problem.

Oddly on my first install of FC4Test3 did install correctly, it has just been on subsequent installs that it has been failing.

Strange.

Since you're going to wait, I'd suggest that you get the "release" FC4. (You probably have time to download the iso file(s) while waiting for your single use system.) The FC4T3 did have several fixes applied that don't seem to be in the development tree. (I did notice that the development tree does now have several FC5 kernels available if you're feeling adventurous. [Not recommended.])

One last point: On your hdb, when you installed FC4T3, did you have the Linux partitions "pre-created," or only the FAT32 partition, and the rest as "free" space? If not, you might consider using your XP tools to just delete the Linux partitions, and then redo the Fedora install to the "free" space, taking the installer defaults.

Did you use the torrent to acquire the files? Or more importantly, did you use the disk verification utility before you installed?

I ran into the exact same error, and so I reran the installer - checking the disks. Turns out that every single one failed the check. I recieved my ISO files from the torrent.

I am now going to use the FTP sites to see if I have the same problem with their ISOs.

I downloaded via FTP ((or HTTP) and used the disc check.