[SOLVED] Installing Fedora14 on desktop with XP

[svagol]

I want to install Amahi and Fedora14 on a desktop which is already running Windows XP. The detailed guide for installation at the Amahi site, which I intended to follow, assumes a clean installation with no XP.
I have downloaded and burnt to DVD the Fedora 14 Desktop Edition. I have one 1,5 TB HDD with much unallocated space outside the partitioning for XP.
When I restart the PC, it will boot XP. The boot options in the BIOS does not allow me to set the DVD as a boot priority.

How do I start the installation process?

[stoat]

Well first, are you sure about that BIOS situation? I'm not arguing, it's just that I've never owned a computer that could not boot from the optical drive. Otherwise, how can any OS be installed? Or how can XP be re-installed should that become necessary? I would look through the BIOS setup screens again. Or maybe you have a splashscreen boot device menu. The key to press for that is usually mentioned onscreen for a second during booting.

Anyway, if you never get anywhere with that BIOS thing, I don't know how to start the Fedora DVD in your situation. But if you still have the iso file used to create it, you can get the installation going with that by installing GRUB for DOS in XP and using it to launch vmlinuz and initrd.img. Once Anaconda (the Fedora installer) is running, it can install the system from the iso file. I've done it before. You even can install GRUB for DOS in a way that does not disturb XP or its boot loader in any way (but I use GRUB for DOS as my main boot loader nowadays). Details omitted in case you're not interested.

[Brad55]

Do you see the text on the screen when your system is booting up? If not try to turn off the logo screen in your BIOS I think thats what it's called. The reason I say that is because if it's turn on you will not see the prompt to boot from CD/DVD. I have never seen a computer not have a CD/DVD boot option. If it's a laptop there could be some thing at the bottom of the screen saying press F12 to show boot menu and this iswhere you could boot from CD.

[glennzo]

Regarding your sig Brad ...

Pink Floyd much Great band!

[svagol]

Thank you for taking time to support me. I spent some more time in the BIOS and was able to change the priority order from which the PC is booting. (However, I now boot only Fedora and not XP - maybe because I do not have GRUB or similar applications installed)

The installation process includes restructuring the physical and logical volumes of the disc prior to loading the OS. I missed this when proceeding through the installation process. Now Fedora14 is up and running with the default physical and logical volume. The default occupies all the space on the single HDD installed, except the partitioning for Windows
I need to shrink lv_home lv_root and establish a separate sda for media server files.
I open the Logical Volume Management utility.
There is an Edit tool to unmount and reduce logical volume. But it returns "umount command failed" because /home: device is busy.
It seems I can not reduce physical volume before logical volume is freed up. The OS asks for an additional HDD to establish an additional sda.

(I considered uninstalling Fedora14 and reinstall again, however, the only recipe I find, having an XP installation unbooted on the PC, involves a windows system restore disc. I am afraid of getting locked in and lost on the way when experimenting with installing GRUB in order to dual boot and thereafter experiment with the windows system restore application)

How can I accomplish the repartitioning?

[Brad55]

svagol open a terminal and type this in
sudo gedit /boot/grub/grub.conf
and post what you get in gedit

I'm think that the timeout is zero in your grub if not it should tell use if your windows drive is in the grub conf.

[svagol]

I entered the string in the terminal. It asks for a password for my user account. When I enter the user account password the reply is that I am not in the sudoers file, and incident will be reported. When I enter the root password, the reply is Sorry, try again. .....

[Brad55]

Ok try this one
su -l <----lower L
<root password>
then type
gedit /boot/grub/grub.conf

Sorry but I have been using openSUSE and Ubuntu and now moving to Fedora. What I have seen so far is they have their policies set different than the others.

[svagol]

Thanks, that worked.
Below is what I got back in gedit.

# grub.conf generated by anaconda
#
# Note that you do not have to rerun grub after making changes to this file
# NOTICE: You have a /boot partition. This means that
# all kernel and initrd paths are relative to /boot/, eg.
# root (hd0,1)
# kernel /vmlinuz-version ro root=/dev/mapper/vg_amahihomeserver-lv_root
# initrd /initrd-[generic-]version.img
#boot=/dev/sda
default=0
timeout=5
splashimage=(hd0,1)/grub/splash.xpm.gz
hiddenmenu
title Fedora (2.6.35.6-45.fc14.i686)
root (hd0,1)
kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.35.6-45.fc14.i686 ro root=/dev/mapper/vg_amahihomeserver-lv_root rd_LVM_LV=vg_amahihomeserver/lv_root rd_LVM_LV=vg_amahihomeserver/lv_swap rd_NO_LUKS rd_NO_MD rd_NO_DM LANG=en_US.UTF-8 SYSFONT=latarcyrheb-sun16 KEYBOARDTYPE=pc KEYTABLE=us-acentos rhgb quiet
initrd /initramfs-2.6.35.6-45.fc14.i686.img
title Other
rootnoverify (hd0,0)
chainloader +1

[Majara]

¡Hola!

In the initial black grub screen you must press Esc before 5 sec, and then, in the new screen, the Other option.

If this doesn't fix the problem, in my grub.conf, the Windows option is:

title Windows XP
rootnoverify (hd0,0)
makeactive
chainloader +1

You can change the title without problems, but before add the makeactive line to grub.conf, I suggest you to read about this grub command on the net.

Saludos

[svagol]

Muchas gracias! Now I can chose which OS to boot, and it works.

However, in order to solve my main problem mentioned above about repartitioning of the physical and logical volumes to prepare for the Amahi solution:

Can I get around the error message I get when try using the utility inside Fedora to shrink lv_home, lv_root and establish a sda for the media files?
Can I solve it if I attaching temporarily another HDD to the PC?
..or will I have to wipe out Fedora 14 using a windows system restore application (or any other easily understandable solution), and reinstall it again to get the partitioning and logical volume reshuffle right for the Amahi home server solution?[COLOR="Silver"]

... I uninstalled, and will reinstall Fedora14 and get the logical volumes right before loading the live image again to the hard drive...

[Brad55]

svagol you can change the time in the timeout to some thing like 10 or 15. Just open it up the same way as before and save it.

To resize a partition I use gparted but you might have to unmount the partition before you resize it. You can also use a live CD of gparted GParted LiveCD

[Brad55]

svagol you can change the time in the timeout to some thing like 10 or 15. Just open it up the same way as before and save it.

To resize a partition I use gparted but you might have to unmount the partition before you resize it. You can also use a live CD of GParted LiveCD http://distrowatch.com/?newsid=06592