Help - Overwrite Old Windows with Fedora 20
 

Friends,

As some of you can tell, I am a newbie to Linux and the forums. Unfortunately/fortunately, I'm finding my way. However, not without your help.

I just copied Fedora 20 onto the recently downloaded Fedora Live thumb drive.

I configured my BIOS to look for the o/s from USB Harddrive/thumbdrive.

When the system boots, it attempts to boot of the USB but I receive the error in the attached photo.

Again... all help is appreciated.

Did you just copy the Fedora *.iso to the thumb drive or did you do something to make it bootable, such as set it up with unetbootin?

When you copied Fredora 20 to a thumb drive did you change the file /etc/fstab on the thumb drive? Did you change your bootloader configuration on the thumbdrive?

---------------------
Steve Stites

I used the liveusb-creator, https://fedorahosted.org/liveusb-creator/ for Windows. I did this because I was using a Windows platform to download the liveusb.

---------- Post added 03-23-14 at 09:32 PM ----------

Once I launched the application, I browsed to the the iso and copied it over onto the thumb drive.

I did not change the /etc/fstab nor did I change my bootloader. I downloaded and installed liveusb by Fedora onto my Windows 7 machine.

Some other details... I'm attempting to replace the o/s on my other laptop. The old laptop has Windows Vista installed; the laptop is 8 yrs old. Not sure how much this will help.

The most likely cause is that the image on the thumb drive is borked.

Did you check the md5sum on the Fedora *.iso after you downloaded it to make sure the download arrived intact?

It is asking you type at the

prompt to view the log on why you are not booting.

Just curious. Did you md5sum check the Fedora Iso or did the usb installer download the iso and
install it for on the usb in Windows.

Also. If me. I would download http://spins.fedoraproject.org/xfce/

Then md5sum check the iso https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aw3nzdkeJao

Spring for a 5 disk dvdrw disk set from the dollar store or walmart.

Burn a DVD and boot it instead.

or

Maybe use https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rvsDHM68jM8

instead of https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y1RP-MNNzLY

to create your Fedora live usb. I have a feeling you ended up with a corrupted iso download.

Edit: Frankbell types faster than me. Saying the same as him.

Also. I would try using https://susestudio.com/a/cqOT1W/open...ith-some-tools

that also. Suse is a rpm distro but a little more stable than Fedora 20 for a beginner as far
as rpm distros go. Up to you though.

Package List in my link

rokytnji, if I typed faster, it was only because I said a lot less. Your post had some great suggestions.

Thanks to all of you for all your help.

I downloaded and executed unetbootin. However, when I attempted to boot from the thumb drive, I still had issues. I kept receiving the same system errors as displayed in the initial post.

I guess that I should have also mentioned that the laptop I was attempting to install on is a Windows Vista machine that was purchased in 2006/2007. Should I attempt to install an older version of Fedora? I know some of you have suggested to install Ubuntu or Mint. But, I think I'd like to stay with Fedora. I purchased the Linux Bible to help me with my Linux journey.

The thing obviously boots from the USB - can you save that rdsosreport as the message indicates ?. You may need to write it to a different USB - do you have another USB slot ?. what do the following show ?

Yes. I do have two other USB slots. I will attempt to save a txt file to the thumb drive.

In the Solaris system I work with, I use /rmdisk/unnamed_rmdisk to save to a thumb drive. Would I save to a thumb drive the same way?

Given that you are in a (very) limited recovery shell and your lack of Linux commands this could get awkward. You need to read messages and do as asked - run the journalctl command and page through to see anything obvious - maybe go to the end and take a photo. the "q" key (for quit) will get you out of that.
Plug in the second USB and run the commands I asked for above, and these as well - post (all) the outputEdit: ok, those commnds I gave you in the earlier post may not exist in that environment - try these instead (they'll be long outputs)