Problems! No bootable cd or linux

[Antrex]

Hi there!
I've hardly touched linux before but decided to try out FC2 when it was released. The only problem I have is that booting from cd won't work with my cd drive (BIOS supports it though) and thus I can't even get close to installing it. I might add that I have no other linux box at home to make a net install from, and since the net install boot disc is to be written to cd, it doesn't even matter.
As I've understood, there's no really good way to boot from floppy to install FC2 either, so is the **** i'm in as deep as it seems or are there any kind souls out there who can point me in a better direction?

[kbradl1]

You can net install from a floppy. Look at http://vishalshah.org/node/view/81 for some directions.

[ilja]

No, this howto desribes FC1 installation. There is no bootdisk.img for a floppy for FC2. I also don't know why. There are only CD images and USB flash memory images.

Please read this disscussion for alternatives : http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-list/2004-May/msg03901.html

[Antrex]

Ok, thanks all. Got it in by first making a FC1 hard disk install and update it to FC2.
Now I just have a few graphic bugs to sort out =/

[raveolution]

From http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-list/2004-May/msg03944.html:

"You missed my suggestion: boot FreeDOS with a generic ATAPI CD-ROM
driver (or appropriate SCSI drivers) and then use loadlin to boot. That
should work (assuming loadlin can load current kernels/initrds; I
haven't tried it in a long time)."

Does anyone know how to make a FreeDos bootdisk with Aic7xxx SCSI drivers?

[bobbitt]

Originally posted by Antrex
Ok, thanks all. Got it in by first making a FC1 hard disk install and update it to FC2.
Now I just have a few graphic bugs to sort out =/

I have the same problem... Can you explain how to update a FC1 disk to to a FC2 disk?


Thanks

[Anthem]

I've consistently heard that the kernel is too big to fit on a 1.44M disk.

I'm certainly no Linux expert, but that seems crazy to me. We're not talking about all support for all drivers/filesystems/cpus/etc, we're talking about the ability to open a CD-ROM drive.

Mandrake 10.0 uses the 2.6 kernel and still manages a boot disk.

There's no "official" boot disk, but might there be an unoffical one? Google has no answers.

If an official boot disk doesn't exist, and an unoffical boot disk doesn't exist, then how would I go about making one?

[bobbitt]

Here's what I did... I installed FC1, then updated grub.conf to load from the vlminuz/initrd on the CD (in the images directory) and that kickstarted the install. Then I formatted the disk and installed FC2...

[raveolution]

Originally posted by Anthem
I've consistently heard that the kernel is too big to fit on a 1.44M disk.

I'm certainly no Linux expert, but that seems crazy to me. We're not talking about all support for all drivers/filesystems/cpus/etc, we're talking about the ability to open a CD-ROM drive.

Mandrake 10.0 uses the 2.6 kernel and still manages a boot disk.

There's no "official" boot disk, but might there be an unoffical one? Google has no answers.

If an official boot disk doesn't exist, and an unoffical boot disk doesn't exist, then how would I go about making one?
Yes it is crazy.

They could have created an autoboot.bat file on the CD-ROM which would load a bigger-than-floppy-image boot file to kickstart the install.

I wonder why no one thought of that?

I wish there was a way to do this rather than kludge together an install by installing FC1, then editing grub files (and I don't even know what to put in them or how) and then reinstalling FC2... what a mess! Jeez.

[bobbitt]

Originally posted by raveolution
They could have created an autoboot.bat file on the CD-ROM which would load a bigger-than-floppy-image boot file to kickstart the install.

Doesn't that require that you boot from CD-ROM?

[raveolution]

Originally posted by bobbitt
Doesn't that require that you boot from CD-ROM?
Nope, you can use a DOS/FreeDos/whatever boot disk that loads up the ATAPI or SCSI drivers and do it.

These boot-from-CD things don't normally allow for booting from a DOS prompt. This makes it impossible to install Linux on a legacy system.

I'm offering a catch-all idea that would make them work on all systems, legacy or not

[bobbitt]

Nice! Thanks for the info!

[jpmcc]

FC2 doesn't provide a 'bootable floppy' image because the code is too big to fit on a floppy.

The simplest answer is to boot from a Smart Boot Manager floppy (from http://btmgr.sourceforge.net/). Smart Boot will then allow you to boot from the Fedora Core CDROM. This has worked for me since FC 2 Test 3.

John

[r8devil]

Great solution John. I had the same problem with a system that doesn't allow booting from a CD drive but wanted to install it and the system did not have a OS. Other solution suggested from the forums that I read only allowed for installation by getting FC1 or some other solution that needed a lot of work. I knew that there should be a better solution out there that didnt need so much work. Its linux and should be able to boot without a CD

Your suggestion give me a simple solution. Thanks!

A