Fedora 15 Runs, but Doesn't Install

[Eddman962]

Hey Everyone,

I'm new to Linux and I'm having trouble installing Fedora 15. I really like Fedora 15, and running it would help me familiarize myself with Linux and command line.

The Problem:
I can boot Fedora 15 live x64 from on a flash drive with YUMI and it runs well. When I try to install, the installation hangs when it gets to searching for 'Basic Storage Devices'. No matter how long I leave it or how many times I try it will not install.

I Have Also Tried:
- Booting from full dvd iso. Install crashes at the same place.
- USB boot with Unetbootin and liveusb-creator. Crashes without booting (I forget the error) Truthfully Unetbootin booted when I first tried but it may have stopped after I formatted with YUMI once.
- Frugal hard disk install with Unetbootin. Crashes.
- USB Boot of GParted. Crashes when searching for hard disks.
- Adding nomodeset to install, but it already seemed to be there. I could have done it wrong.

My best guess is that my hard drive is formatted or partitioned irregularly which is preventing the machine from recognizing it. The stock Windows 7 x64 runs perfectly fine, although there is weird partitioning. There is a hidden boot partition smack in the middle of the drive which separates it into C: and D: storage areas.

My laptop is the Asus 1215B-MU17
C-50 APU
No CD or Floppy Drive

Any help you give me would be GREATLY appreciated. I have spent many hours on this. Please feel free to ask me any questions. Thank you in advance

[michaaa62]

You might try from a booted live media to post the output of [code]fdisk -l{/code]

[Eddman962]

Thanks michaaa, it seems notable that "Disk /dev/mapper/live -rw doesn't contain a valid partition table." and "Disk /dev/mapper/live-osimg-min doesn't contain a valid partition table."

Here's the full printout. It looks like links aren't allowed, so add http://
i.imgur.com/eZ8aI.png
i.imgur.com/K6L72.png

[michaaa62]

Well, there is no free space available on your hard disk. The ASUS people stuffed it with all four primary partitions and just added one logical partition on the extended /dev/sda3. But i am of no help at all if it comes to EFI or GUID partitioning!
The error about the live image is actually no error, because it needs no partition table.

Try to create some free space by shrinking /dev/sda5 and add another partition /dev/sda6 in the free area, and hope the installer will pick this up.

[Eddman962]

This sounds promising! Sorry, I'm no expert on partitioning either, could you clarify a bit?

Here's my partitions manager from the Windows side: http:// + i.imgur.com/bh3Dy.png

Logical drive D: basically empty, and C: isn't too filled either. The fifth partition MULTIBOOT is my flash drive. So should I shrink D: or try to make it a primary drive? And format it in Fat32 or NTFS?

Edit: I just read that Linux can't write to NFTS, so maybe I'll try making D: a FAT32 drive.

[michaaa62]

Edit: I just read that Linux can't write to NFTS, so maybe I'll try making D: a FAT32 drive.

Linux support for NTFS has really matured over years, it is safe to read and write NTFS file systems from within your Fedora system.

So should I shrink D: or try to make it a primary drive?

Start your Live-USB media and use gparted to shrink the partition and filesystem in /dev/sda5, aka D:
You do that by highlighting the partition, choose 'Move/Resize' Use the arrow on the right side to adjust the size of the partition. Apply the changes and wait until it finished. Then add a new partition by clicking in the free space and choose 'New'. Filesystem are not important here, because the installer later will apply fresh file-systems anyway.

Now hope for the installer to pick this up and not stumble again.

Note please: You have to check or repair the file-system later in windows, because windows does need the information about D: to be corrected.

[Eddman962]

Gparted crashes because it doesn't recognize any hard drives, as with most Linux distros. I managed to install Xubuntu, and although I'd rather use Fedora I'm pretty happy with it. If anyone figures out this problem, let me know - otherwise though it's left unsolved.

Thanks michaa, I really appreciate you're help. If nobody replied I was probably going to give up and stick with Windows 7.