Fedora 4 Installation Problems

rh10023 · #1 2nd January 2006, 12:00 AM

I have a Dell PowerEdge 400SC, it has an ATAPI CDROM and a SATA Internal Hard Drive. It also have a SCSI tape drive in it as well. I have been running Fedora 2 on this computer for quite some time now and decided to upgrade to Fedora 4. Created a CD boot disk from the boot.iso image using 2 different computers, but I cannot get the computer to boot off of the CDROM drive to start the installation. Anyone have suggestions on how I can get Fedora 4 installed on this computer?

Tashiro · #2 2nd January 2006, 08:47 AM

Hello rh10023,

Do other bootable cdroms (FC2, windows 2000 or something) boot the system?

Did you check your BIOS settings? Make sure the first boot device is ATAPI cdrom.

Tashiro

rh10023 · #3 2nd January 2006, 01:22 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tashiro

Hello rh10023,

Do other bootable cdroms (FC2, windows 2000 or something) boot the system?

Did you check your BIOS settings? Make sure the first boot device is ATAPI cdrom.

Tashiro

I tried both FC2 and Windows 2000 on this machine. What happens is that looks like the CDROM is spinning, but then after a while the machine reverts to GRUB and Fedora 2 boot on the hard drive commences.

The first boot device is the ATAPI CDROM.

Any pointers is much appreciated.

starstatras · #4 2nd January 2006, 02:16 PM

Change all the other boot devices to cdrom that works in my pc

grndplane · #5 2nd January 2006, 02:43 PM

Press F2 when you start booting. This will take you to the bios setup. Find the menu that says boot devices, and change from your hard drive being the first boot device to the CD rom or DVD rom being the first boot device. Make sure you save your new settings when you exit. It will now look at the CD for the boot info. Use checkmedia command to make sure the disks are good. Then I would use the graphic installer and all the defaults. It seems like the bad things only start happening when people get creative :-) This site is filled with good info
http://stanton-finley.net/fedora_cor...ion_notes.html
Good luck.

rh10023 · #6 2nd January 2006, 04:00 PM

I did some more diagnosis to the system. It looks like the CDROM drive is not working properly. When I have the machine booted up in Fedora 2 and do a mount /dev/cdrom /mnt/cdrom, I get "No Medium Found" message. With out having to open the box up, is there a command I can run to see if the CDROM is working properly?

Tashiro · #7 2nd January 2006, 06:45 PM

Try to mount different cdroms: original cdrom, audio cd, cdrw, cdworm.

Which one do work?

Tashiro

rh10023 · #8 2nd January 2006, 07:37 PM

I tried to mount the Fedora 4 boot CDROM, the Windows 2000 Pro CD and I get the same error from the mount command. No Media Found. But I have noticed that when I run the mount command the CD Drive does not seem to spin up. I think I am going to have to open it up.

Thetargos · #9 2nd January 2006, 09:41 PM

I certainly hope you don't have a dying out CD on your hands.

rh10023 · #10 3rd January 2006, 02:28 AM

I have pretty much determined that my CD Drive is broken some how. I need to figure out an alternative mechanism to get Fedora 4 installed.

I was hoping I could do it through yum some how. But I have been reading that this is not the most practical means.

I think I need to figure out how to boot the install through a USB drive or a USB connected HP CD Writer that I have. Any advice on how to handle this?