What is bootable?

[glennzo]

What is available for Fedora 15 that is actually bootable? I've downloaded 3 ISO's so far only to have them all fail to boot. I'm fairly sure I've tried TC1 and 2. Maybe the problem has something to do with the fact that I'm trying this through VirtualBox. I'm not sure. Be gentle. I'm a newb.


Yep. Every one of these things stops at [ 4.251858] [<c040377e>] ? kernel_thread_helper+0x6/0x10. Every freakin' time.

[smr54]

I got the netiso which got things from the net (without me having to enter an URL) and installed something I could boot--not on an Nvidia machine though, noveau still doesn't work with my cards.

[glennzo]

I'll give it a try Scott. On my NVidia machine :eek: 'tis all I've got :rolleyes:


The errors have got to be a VirtualBox issue. I just got the same thing with the NetInstall ISO. Let's try a real installation.

[smr54]

I missed the VB stuff. Don't remember if I've tried with VBox.
. I tried the live LXDE, wondering if I could participate in test day (but ran out of time, and I needed the machine for something else), but as I said, on that machine's NVidia (6150SE).

[glennzo]

Junk. Now attempting install with TC2 (I think) and basic video driver.

Seems to be working. Currently "Starting installation process".

[smr54]

Ok, just did a default install in VirtualBox. It took four tries--in one case, it was set on upgrade existing install, I clicked next, and then, when I went back, it said it couldn't as disks were already mounted. Typical anaconda nonsense. It also failed one time on vim, which made me snicker in my elitist way, as I figure the user Fedora seems to be targeting probably doesn't know what vim is and to abort the whole installation because of it is a bit of a waste. But in fairness, Windows will do the same thing, though usually for a file necessary for the system to even boot.

Next time, it froze while installing ibus-chewing, another package which I'd never use, nor would the vast majority of Americans--one assumes a Chinese speaker could install it afterwards, but at any rate....

I also thought the network dialog poorly done--firstly, it tells me it needs to configure a network card--Why? I downloaded an install DVD--what if all I had was a card that needed configuration after install. Then, the network card dialog appears, and I click close, and it's fine. Doesn't make sense, but ok.

On the 4th try it installed and booted--I was trying to figure out what was different about gnome 3--that's the default, right? Not being a Gnome user, it didn't seem that different, but maybe it didn't use Gnome 3, I dunno.

Anyway, I probably should have mentioned that I always do a minimal install and add things afterwards, which, I suspect, usually contributes to my lack of problems--for example, had I done that this time, I wouldn't have had those issues with vim or ibus-chewing.


I then add X, but make sure I'm booting into runlevel 3 to deal with issues.

You might consider trying to do it that way if the attempt you do now is abortive. :)

[glennzo]

I got it installed and managed to run the first yum update. That all went well but when I reboot I get a loop for the log in "greeter". Can't enter anything so I can't log in. I think there's something mentioned about that here in the forum. I'll have to look for it.

Of course, firstboot didn't run the first time either so I manually added user glenn then logged in as glenn.

After the update and reboot firstboot decides to start working. Go figure. Don't need it now.

I didn't see anything alarmingly different either, at least not yet. Maybe there's something I haven't enabled?

Tiring of the Alpha at this point and not wanting to mess with it I edited grub to add the existing Fedora 14 installation and booted into it for the time being. I'll play some more later on.

[GoinEasy9]

I tried both the 32 and 64 bit RC2 DVD last night, both failed at the greeter screen. The RC1 32 bit had the mutter bug, and the nightlies all seem to have their own problems. I was hoping the RC2 got over the mutter bug, but I guess I'll have to wait to find out, since I now can't get past the login screen.
<sigh> I'm getting tired of non-installable iso's. I think I'll play somewhere else today.

[smr54]

Ok Glen and Goin', for what it's worth.

Firstly, I should make the disclaimer that I prefer more minimalist type stuff, and really only use Fedora because my job is basically CentOS/RH/OEL based. So, it's not the typical usage of it.

At any rate, doing a minimal installation (on VirtualBox), using network install, booting into runlevel three, using system-config-network-tui to configure network, then manually edit the ifcfg-pcwhatever they're calling it so that NM has nothing to do with it, then adding X and fluxbox (or openbox) and xterm--I wonder why, with all the bloat of Fedora, they've chosen to leave out xterm--not a biggie, just that, when I do try gnome and do alt+f2 to run a command, I type xterm which is quicker to type than gnome-te <tab>. Seems to work reasonably well. Haven't tried sound, but sound, although I always see an error with mplayer from command line, has been pretty trouble free for me as long as I put myself in audio group.

So, for my needs, seems to be OK. Again, haven't really tested anything--oh, printing installed pretty trouble free, an HP all in one, but still have to add libsane-hpaio, (which would be added I guess, if I used Gnome, probably one reason it got missed for so long), and also, my Brother HL2170W had a cups driver, which CentOS, for example, doesn't have.

Installation too--as mentioned, it was two programs that died on various attempts--however, doing a minimal netinstall is 194 packages (or so), while a default Gnome is 1194--so that's 1,000 extra packages with risk of something not going right.

So....doing it that way works for me. Even the Gnome one worked in VBox, as mentioned, but I simply prefer the window manager type desktops, in my case, the *box ones, to the desktop environments.

[GoinEasy9]

@smr54

My interest was in using/investigating the most recent versions of Gnome3/Gnome-Shell, so, a minimal install isn't what I'm looking for. I keep trying whatever iso comes out because I've read that some here have had success with their installations. Many more, it seems, are having the same problems I'm having. I saw a positive about last nights nightly, so, I tried that in 32 bit, but it wound up defaulting to Gnome2. My graphics here:

Graphics: Card nVidia G92 [GeForce 9800 GT] Fedora X.org 1.9.4 Res: 1920x1080@60.0hz, 1920x1080@60.0hz
GLX Renderer Gallium 0.4 on NV92 GLX Version 2.1 Mesa 7.9 Direct Rendering Yes (On F14)

should not be a problem, so, I guess part of the frustration is justified.

[tox]

RC2 is now Available if anyone wants to try that , have a lok in my previous RC1 thread

[GoinEasy9]

@detox I just edited my other post. It was the RC2 that I tried last night. RC2, either 32 or 64 bit won't get past login screen.

[smr54]

@GE9, yes, I understand that. I was trying to point out that for me, with my needs, it's working. (Though I did find, when I used the default stuff, that once I got it installed, it did boot into Gnome without problem--I don't know if it was Gnome 3 or Gnome.sh or regular Gnome though, it looked different than I remember, but judging from screen shots I've seen, I don't think it was the new one.)

Anyway, tested all _my_ stuff now, sound, printing, Japanese input, and all was good save for an oddity on first boot, when on F1, I couldn't log in--I'd type root, it would ask for password, and then the password would echo to the screen and then tell me it was incorrect. On F2, etc., however, it was fine.

All in all, nothing special--glad to see they've at least taken the # sign out of the new naming of ethernet devices, I'm sure that somewhere along the line, that would have caused problems in scripts, unless the coder remembered to escape it.

The one real absurdity was the default partitioning--it made two lvm partitions, one for / and one for swap--on a 10 GB VirtualBox disk, it gave 5 GB to swap, leaving only 5GB for the OS (which was given 3GB of RAM.)

Of course, on a real install, I'd be custom partitioning anyway, so that's not an issue.

[tox]

@detox I just edited my other post. It was the RC2 that I tried last night. RC2, either 32 or 64 bit won't get past login screen.

hmm weird and i dont see any major Bugs about that either

[ovadyah]

The only 2 installs that work for me are the 64bit live cd and full dvd of RC1.....I have had some of the live nightly work but not install,
but for the most part they do not work or install. The updates of a couple days ago trashed one of my working systems,
see my post.....re-installed and both machines are working without updates now.:)

Thanks for all the info! I took my working install from the live cd rc1 installed the koji upower fix, then ran all the updates,
seems to be running fine tho the first boot was a bit slow.

PS I have one ati and one nvidea system.

[smr54]

Unfortunately for those who own NVidia, this is where one gets bitten by Fedora's being, in many ways, a development platform. Adam W. has explained, quite eloquently, why this will sometimes happen, and I think most folks who use Fedora come to realize it--basically, right now, noveau is being forced upon us, making us into guinea pigs. The good part of this is that it will get it to be a really viable alternative more quickly than would happen if, for example, the xf86-video-nv was used, and people just either used that or got the proprietary.

The bad side, of course, is that it makes getting many machines with NVidia to work somewhat harder.

My own technique is to do a minimal install. Then I won't have to worry about X. Also, before rebooting (after installation), I use ctl+alt+f2 to get to a console, cd into /mnt/sysimage/etc/ and edit grub.conf to make sure it has nomodeset, and to also change the timeout from 0 to 3.

Now, I should be able to get a console. At that point, I can use Leigh's guide to get the regular NVidia driver working.

I'm sure there are other ways to do it, but at present, this is the one that I've found to be relatively easy for me. While I understand, and applaud Fedora's reasoning, it will, till noveau really gets working, make it somewhat more difficult on many machines with NVidia. I have the vague feeling that I've seen somewhere that the idea is to get it to go to VESA if noveau doesn't work, but I haven't seen that happen yet.

[DCOH]

I used the Fedora15-RC1 DVD iso and installed ok, but on firstboot there was nothing to add user. I than did a second fresh install and was able to login. The only other problem was with an update that didn't have the latest upower and the desktop would not finish loading. After fixing that problem it is working again, not crazy about Gnome 3 at this time as several things crash, and the new menus are going to take some getting use to.

[smr54]

OK, this time I tried a default again. There is a message that seems to pop up only on occasion, telling me it couldn't load Gnome 3--to learn more about Gnome 3 see, and gave a link with no indication of graphic requirements. So, I upped the video memory on VBox, enabled 3D acceleration, and installed Guest Editions. It would then start to boot and go to a black screen--as it's VirtualBox, hitting escape and all that doesn't seem to work to get to the grub menu, and of course, this was the one time I didn't bother resetting the time out.

So, I said the heck with it. It isn't something I'd use anyway--judging from Gnome users like Dan on another thread, it's not all that great anyway.

To sum up...meh, this Gnome 3 is definitely not ready for prime time--if one uses Fedora as I do, it's fine, but for this typical desktop user, whoever they may be, it's got some fixing. Of course, it's an alpha edition right now, though it is being marked as RC2.

I guess it's working on whatever hardware the developers are using, but these days, I don't have the time I used to have, so I'll probably leave it alone till the beta, at which point, it usually works pretty smoothly for me, judging from past releases. I just don't have the time or energy to track down bugs and give the developers enough useful information to help them fix the issues I see, save for the minor ones where I can figure out the issue (usually a dependency that is supplied if one installs Gnome, but isn't marked as a particular dependency of that package.)

[Mariusz W]

Unfortunately for those who own NVidia, this is where one gets bitten by Fedora's being, in many ways, a development platform. Adam W. has explained, quite eloquently, why this will sometimes happen, and I think most folks who use Fedora come to realize it--basically, right now, noveau is being forced upon us, making us into guinea pigs. The good part of this is that it will get it to be a really viable alternative more quickly than would happen if, for example, the xf86-video-nv was used, and people just either used that or got the proprietary.

The bad side, of course, is that it makes getting many machines with NVidia to work somewhat harder.

My own technique is to do a minimal install. Then I won't have to worry about X. Also, before rebooting (after installation), I use ctl+alt+f2 to get to a console, cd into /mnt/sysimage/etc/ and edit grub.conf to make sure it has nomodeset, and to also change the timeout from 0 to 3.

Now, I should be able to get a console. At that point, I can use Leigh's guide to get the regular NVidia driver working.

I'm sure there are other ways to do it, but at present, this is the one that I've found to be relatively easy for me. While I understand, and applaud Fedora's reasoning, it will, till noveau really gets working, make it somewhat more difficult on many machines with NVidia. I have the vague feeling that I've seen somewhere that the idea is to get it to go to VESA if noveau doesn't work, but I haven't seen that happen yet.

During the initial installation of Fedora on one of my computers I decided to go with nouveau. Does this make harder using Leigh's guide to install the proper nVidia driver later when one decides to do so -- in comparison with what you are proposing here, Scott?

[smr54]

Hrrm, don't remember. I think that what I did was my usual minimal install. I don't remember if it wouldn't boot at that point, or only wouldn't boot after I added X. At that point, I added in the nomodeset, and used Leigh's method. I just remember missing the last part of Leigh's guide, (iwth dracut) and finding it still wasn't working, going back and finding it.

Sorry, that workstation was a relatively recent change at work, so I've only done one installation on it.

[Palooka]

I've successfully booted and installed the nightly build of the 64 bit Live CD (desktop x86_64-20110225.00.iso) into a VirtualBox VM.

One workaround I had to do was update Anaconda before running liveinst. That seemed to cause liveinst to disappear from the menus, so I just launched it from gnome-terminal.

Updates OK.

Haven't managed successfully to install the VBox Guest Additions yet, though.

Palooka