Installation did not work as expected

[357mag]

I have Windows 2000 installed on my master drive. I just installed Fedora Core 4 on my slave drive. Now during the setup program there comes a screen where it shows where Grub will be installed. I distinctly remember it saying that Grub will be installed on dev/hda which would be correct according to what I've read. Grub would be installed on the MBR of the Windows drive.

Now when the setup program completed and the screen said to remove the CD and press Next to reboot I was expecting to see a screen that listed both operating systems and offering me a choice as far as which one to boot into. Nope. Instead when the computer rebooted it automatically booted into Windows 2000. No choice. So what happened and is there a fix?

[dardesta]

I'm trying to figure that out too.

[tashirosgt]

You might be able to change a motherboard BIOS setting that would allow the machine to boot from the slave drive.

If not, you could use the first Fedora Cd and boot in the rescue mode. Then see what devices Linux sees and whether they agree with the naming conventions that you expected. Do you have IDE drives or SATA drives or a mix of the two? Grub can be reinstalled with the /sbin/grub-install command..

[357mag]

Well I went into the BIOS and under Hard Disk Drives there were two there. And I changed it so my computer boots from the slave drive, where I installed Fedora. But when I rebooted my machine all I got was a black screen with a blinking cursor. Nothing else. I don't understand why cuz the install program did say it was successful.

I also put in my Fedora installation DVD and went into rescue mode, but after the initial few seconds the screen just froze. The last entry on the screen was this:

[<C01012B1>] Kernel_Thread_Helper +0x5/0x14

So I don't know what's going on. Both my hard drives are IDE.

As far as reinstalling Grub goes where do I type that command? Do I re-insert my Fedora DVD and wait for the part of the screen where I could type that in?

[dardesta]

I am having the same trouble. I think the problem is that the GRUB is not being tranferred to the master drive properly where XP is installed. I think to get around this problem, I am going to make my Linux drive the master and my XP the slave and then reinstall Linux on the master while the XP is the default OS.

[tashirosgt]

I think that not being able to boot Fedora in the rescue mode indicates there is something wrong with the installation or with the hard drive. Hard drive manufacturers make diagnostic software for their drives. I would run such a program to test your slave hard drive. Run Hitachi's "Drive Fitness Test" program if you can't find one made specially for your drive.

Mention your specific motherboard (or machine model, if it is a portable). Perhaps someone on the forum knows some special tricks that must be used.

The way I had in mind to reinstall grub was to boot in the rescue mode, mount the filesystem that was installed and run the grub-install command that is in those files. It won't work if you can't boot from the rescue mode. I suppose you could boot from the Tomsrtbt single floppy distribution of Linux, available on the web. Or you could try a single cd disk dsitribution of Linux like systemRescueCd.

[357mag]

Well I re-installed Fedora to the slave drive again but I get the same problem. My motherboard is an Intel D865PERL.

[357mag]

Well I downloaded that Hitachi Drive Fitness Test and I ran a Quick Test on my slave drive. When the test was done it said "Operation Completed Successfully." That leads me to believe the drive is okay.

[tashirosgt]

aceswild reported using pci=nosort on the D865PERL helped:
http://fedoraforum.org/forum/showthread.php?t=64892&highlight=D865PERL
If you use the advanced search feature of the forum you can find other users with the D865PERL. Look at those messages. I think the problem is mysterious. I am curious whether the system would boot from Tomsrtbt. I don't understand why it doesn't boot from the Fedora cd in the rescue mode. If you also have some trouble with Windows XP then I would suggest running memtest86+ from the Fedora install cd.

[357mag]

Well I looked at some other posts that had to deal with the problem of getting the install screen going but I got past that. My problem is getting the computer to show the screen that lists both operating systems and gives a choice. I didn't see anything relevant to that.

I did post this question on PC Magazine's forum and one fellow said I need to set the partition on which Linux is installed as the "Active" partition. The BIOS can only boot an OS from the "Active" partition and only one partition in the system can be marked as "Active" at one time.

He did go on to say that there are two ways to do this. The second way he said is the more preferred way and that is to use LILO or GRUB as the boot loader and configure it to allow starting either Windows or Linux.

Well I'm assuming that during the install process that the boot loader would be automatically installed on the MBR of the Windows drive and that would be in fact the "Active" partition.

So why I'm not seeing the screen which shows and asks which OS to boot from I don't know.

[tashirosgt]

I'm not sure if your progress report means that you can boot Linux in the rescue mode yet. The fdisk command will show you information about the partitions on a drive and which one is "active". I think if you search for "grub.conf" you will find the more detailed messages about grub problems. If you login as root, he output of
/sbin/fdisk -l
would show the partition information. The active partitions have a '*' in the column labeled "boot".

[357mag]

I cannot get into Rescue Mode at all. Every time I try the screen just hangs at the place I outlined in one of my above posts. And of course since I can't boot into Fedora I certainly cannot log in as root.

[tashirosgt]

One thought to check for any BIOS updates to your motherboard and apply them. At least this work won't be wasted if you have to resort to using windows on the machine. Also look through the forum messages for other options people have resorted to, such as nousb and try the rescue mode with those.

There is this wierd message:
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-list/2005-July/msg01768.html
Can someone explain that one to me?

[Guess_Who]

since im lazy, wat i would do is go into windows, get a free older version of partition magic, and partition your main drive to one ntfs partition(windows), and one ext3 partition(linux), and use your slave drive for overflow windows files! lol, but thats just me

[357mag]

I tried the "Voodoo" thing and I typed the word "Voodoo" at the prompt but what that does it allows the installation program to proceed without getting hung up. There are a couple of ways to accomplish that though. That's not my problem. I cannot get into rescue mode at all.

I'm rather reluctant to update or "flash" my bios. I did that once and it fried my motherboard.

[Guess_Who]

the newer bios flash's check to make sure that the bios is uncorrupted, so it will make sure it will work.

i did this to overclock better

[dardesta]

I am a newbie, but I think FC4 has bugs in it. I installed Linux on my master drive and made my current drive with XP as my slave. When I choose Fedora to boot in the GRUB screen, it boots properly, but when I choose XP, it doesn't boot. I says something like rootverify(hd1, 0).

NOTE: I can still boot into XP perfectly when my XP harddrive is the only one hooked up to my computer.

[357mag]

What do you mean "the newer bios flashes check"? Are you saying that there is no danger of frying my motherboard? That there is some kind of built-in precaution against frying your motherboard?

And somehow I did actually get into rescue mode. But once I'm in there, what do I do?

[357mag]

I've tried going into rescue mode about 15 times. Twice I've actually succeeded. I think you've got to type in some garbage keys at just the right time in order for it to work. Not good. I've got several pieces of paper printed off, and it appears that there are more than one way to set up a dual boot. One method is was outlined on linuxhelp.com. Once you get into rescue mode you type #chroot /mnt/sysimage and press Enter. Then the instructions say to type #dd if=/dev/hda3 of=linux.bin bs=512 count=1. But if my Fedora is installed on the slave drive wouldn't I type /dev/hdb1 instead? I think I tried that and got something like:

1 + 0 records in
1 + 0 records out

Don't know what all that is about.

[r-debuhr]

I know the solution....read this: http://forums.fedoraforum.org/showthread.php?t=75308
-Ryan