Hi,

I recently downloaded the torrent version of Fedora Core 5 X86 DVD iso. I burned it onto a Staples DVD+R. I intend to dual boot this with Windows XP Professional. I'm using a Dell Latitude C640 Pentium 4 and an external USB I/) Magic DVD burner.

I burnt the DVD with Nero SmartStart. I chose the "Create Bootable DVD" Option. It asked me to locate a Boot Image. I selected the default English one. The burn completed and went to boot from it. The disk immediately booted into Caldera DR-DOS. DOS prompted me for a command. There was a list of "Possible Commands". They were:

/MLX
/BL=16
/LEND=ON
/DELAY=OFF

I'm not familiar with DR-DOS, but I tried each of these commands. Each time DOS replied "Command or Filename not recognized". I than checked Fedora help sites, and they gave me some alternative intallation commands. I tried them and got the same result. I was told that I should recieve a Linux Boot prompt, but the disk always boots directly to DR-DOS. I was also told my burn may have simply copied the iso to the DVD, but I've tried buring about 5 times and Nero always gives the same prompts and does not offer any other way to burn. The disk always burns the same and always boots to DR-DOS.

I'm a relative newcomer to Linux, so am somewhat unfamiliar with installation processes like this-I was wondering if any of you had encountered a similar problem and had a solution?

Thanks very much.

Hi ther,

Cant say anything about DR-DOS but i got the same dvd (albeit 32bit) and i burned it using the same nero.

Dont set any option like bootable dvd/cd etc. Just say burn image from disk (or whatever the option is) and point to the folder of the iso and use dvd-writer as the recorder. That should do it. All iso images are boot images ( i suppose), so no need to specify anything particular.

Try it, it might work.

Hope this helps.
Cheers

Hi,

Thanks for the tip.

I went back to Nero and chose "Write Disk Image to Disk" and selected the iso file, but Nero said "Sorry, this is not a valid Nero Disk image" and refused to burn the disk.

I also found out DOS is asking me to open the iso file, but I don't know the proper command.

Anyone seen this before?

Thanks

What is this DR-DOS ?? Can you explain a bit please!! Can u remove/uninstall it.

ii'll get back to you on this about nero.
Meanwhile, check their site for some FAQs, maybe something should come-up.

DR-DOS is the name of Digital Research's version of DOS (Disk Operating System). Other similar systems are MS-DOS (Microsoft's version packaged w/Windows) and PC-DOS (IBM's version designed to work w/Windows). All of them are Command Line Interface Operating systems (as opposed to Graphics Utility Interfaces like Windows). They require the user to input text commands instead of using the mouse to activate tasks. DOS systems require the user to memorize a specific language that all commands are written in. This is similar to Linux's own Blash Command Line Language, but DOS's language is COMMAND.COM. I'm just learning COMMAND.COM, so I'm a little unfamiliar with the use of DOS (but I'm learning).

Somehow, whenever I try to boot from my FC-5 DVD, DR-DOS is called up. It seems that I have to input a specific DOS command to activate the boot, but I don't know the command. I have no idea why it is doing this.

Thanks again for the help and sorry for the confusion

DR-DOS is starting to frustrate me as it seems to have no command for just plain "open file". I've tried a number of MS-DOS commands and none seem to be compatable. I'd like to either boot directly into FC-5 setup or at least into MS-DOS-no idea where DR-DOS came from. Any Linux help sites don't have anything regarding this.

Anyone else run into this particular situation?

Thanks

You definately shouldn't have anything DOS on a linux instal disk, this must be something nero is doing when you select "bootable dvd".
I used nero to burn FC-5 cd's, haven't tried a dvd yet. I think you need to select "iso image". that's the case for the CDs anyway. If they're just burnt as files they don't boot at all.

Hi All,

Sorry to be away for a while-but I have spent quite a bit of time toiling over FC5.

OK:

I found out why DR-DOS boots from the X86 boot DVD. This is because, interestingly enough, the actual iso image is apparently nonexistant! I double-checked my file and it said it took up 0 Gigabytes of data. It seems DOS came up as part of the C640's own protocol as it couldnt find anything to boot from.

I'm currently in the process of downloading another iso to burn a new boot disk. In the meantime, I borrowed a friend's 5 boot CDs and tried to boot from those. This revealed a slew of new and interesting problems!

Once I put disk 1 in and booted from it as usual, I got all the way through about 1/5 of the installation. At this time, it asked me to switch to disk 2. I did so. The program than said the disk was corrupt and could not be read. Now, I know it is not corrupt because my friend just successfully installed FC5 with the same disks. To be safe, I did a media check on both disk 1 and disk 2. Sure enough, it said it was corrupt.

Thinking this was a problem with my CD drive overheating (it's a laptop) I tried again, but let the drive cool of before putting disk 2 in. It still said it was corrupt. Than, I tried again with two large fans around my laptop. The same result occurred. I than cleaned all the disks and did a SKip Dr. repair on them. I will try again, and will post my results shortly.

Anyone ever seen anything like this? Judging by some of the other threads, incomplete installations seem common in FC5.

Thanks as always.

Hi all,

It turns out that DR-DOS is placed on boot disks by Nero by default. Luckily, I was able to alter this.

It seems there is no problem with the drive or disks. I tried installing FC5 a number of different ways and found what may be a bug in the system. Every time the installer crashes, it crashes when installing Xscreensaver for Xwindow. There appears to be some kind of error written into FC5's own installer (or Xscreensaver) that causes it to either crash or read disks as corrupt. I'm currently trying to work around this by isolating the one package Xscreensaver is in.

Anyone else seen this or know how to remove selected packages?

Thanks.

I was also getting the automatic boot of caldera dr dos when trying to burn an iso using nero 6. Nero wants you to use "smart start"... don't. Either select nero express from smart start or close it and navigate to Nero "Express", which may be under Nero OEM. Anyway you get there... select "disc image or saved project". I navigated to my iso and burned using a standard philips cd-r on a pioneer dvr-111d... worked like a charm. When you select your image file to burn, you may get a warning saying it is not a valid nero image, or something like that, just ignore it, it will work fine. Hope that helps.

Thanks for that tip-that would explain why FC5 would not boot properly.

I still believe that the installation bug lies in the Xscreensaver package. Have you seen if RedHat has corrected this problem in the latest release?

Thanks very much for your help.