[Preston] Re: Installing Fedora Core 1

[Granville Cousins]

Hello (BPD),

Tuesday, March 23, 2004, 11:43:51 AM, you wrote:

(BPD)> Hello Granville,

(BPD)> Apart from the obligatory advice of scrapping windows and just running 
(BPD)> Linux here's my 10 pence worth.

(BPD)> Not sure if you are suggesting the install fails during the installation 
(BPD)> of RPMS, diring post-installation or between the two but as long as some 
(BPD)> of the RPMS are being installed at least we can assume it is using the 
(BPD)> file system ok.

(BPD)> I would boot off the fedora CD 1 and take the recovery option (this used 
(BPD)> to be "linux rescue" at the boot prompt, RH 7 days)

(BPD)> As you know the device you have installed linux under you can simply use 
(BPD)> "mount /dev/hda7 /mnt/image" and this should give you access to the root 
(BPD)> file system under said directory. From there check out /root/install.log 
(BPD)> and /root/install.log.syslog to see if you can get any clues as to 
(BPD)> failing point. Also check any files in /var/log as they may hold 
(BPD)> clues..... if any exist!

(BPD)> p.s. if you don't want to keep typing cd /mnt/image/dir1/ etc.. just 
(BPD)> "chroot /mnt/image" to make that your root mount point.

(BPD)> install.log is a simple list of RPMS installed, followed by a list of 
(BPD)> RPMS ignored, but if it was failing during that part of the install this 
(BPD)> may help diagnose a possible problem.

(BPD)> install.log.syslog is a kind of "extra task" install log, groups 
(BPD)> created, users created, sound card detection etc, and may be of more use 
(BPD)> if it is failing post RPM stage.

(BPD)> otherwise i'm at a loss without more information. Another possibility is 
(BPD)> that the BIOS has the option to stop boot records being written (my 
(BPD)> technical wording hereis attrocious, but i hope you know what i mean). 
(BPD)> Sometimes called a BIOS virus protection. This would hang the install as 
(BPD)> it cannot write the MBR but i would *hope* that RedHat (Fedora) would 
(BPD)> have written a graceful fail message into the install process for that 
(BPD)> problem.

(BPD)> As a side note, should you be unaware of the device you are seeking, 
(BPD)> then simply create a /dev entry using mknod (so "mknod /dev/hda") and 
(BPD)> then fdisk -l ( "fdisk -l /dev/hda" ) gives you partition information. 
(BPD)> (remember, the recovery option used by redhat DOES NOT populate the /dev 
(BPD)> folder which much by default, this is a minimal system)

(BPD)> Good Luck!
(BPD)> Martyn S. Ashworth

(BPD)> Sorry about the long post. Hope it helps someone, if not you ;)

Thanks for your help. What I needed to do was create a SWAP partition
before installing Fedora Core.

-- 
Love and Light,
 Granville                            mailto:granville at yogawithgranville.com