Will Fedora 7/8 X86_64 run on a Dimension 8400?
 

Hi again,

I'm still trying to get Fedora loaded on my Dimension 8400, and am having problems.

So far i've tried:

1. Creating a RAID 1 volume with the 2 internal 400GB SATA drives, Anaconda gets to 99% finished with the / format, then hangs and never comes back. This is repeatable every time. There are no error messages in GUI or text mode.

2. Disabling RAID in the BIOS, and changing to RAID/AHCI mode. Anaconda gets to the same spot, and then reports that /VolGroup00/LogVol00 has a serious format error and cannot proceed.

3. Disabling RAID in the BIOS, and changing to RAID/ATA mode. Same result as #1.

4. Disabling RAID in the BIOS, and changing to SATA/PATA combo mode. Same result as #1.

All of these tests are asking Fedora to remove all partitions from both sda and sdb and to format with the default layouts.

Anyone have a suggestion on why this won't work in Fed7 or Fed8? I used these same HDD's under Windows XP & Vista, and they worked fine, so i'm pretty sure this is not a HW issue.

p.s. when installing Ubuntu Server 7.10 X64 using option 1 above, it sees both HDD's and installs onto sda. this tells me it's a fedora issue

How about just formatting the drives with your Ubuntu install CD/DVD and then installing FC7 onto the partitions that you formatted with Ubuntu.

good suggestion, but i already tried that, and it does the same thing.

ok, now i tried swapping out the 2 Hitachi HDD's for 2 newer Seagate HDD's, and i got the same error message, which eliminates the HD's as the issue.

now i tried Fedora 8 i386 instead, and am getting an even uglier python message after format completes.

i'm about ready to give up....

FINALLY, some success.

using the KDE live CD, i was able to boot into the kde "mode", and then push the image down to the HDD's. the system is now up, and is updating as we speak.

FYI, i ended up having to use RAID/AHCI in the BIOS