Installing Fedora

By Keito
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Grand Master

markwolfe Veteran

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Now I can make a boot disc shoudl i re-burn everything and try again booting? Another thing is that there is no accual ISO file, just a bunch of rpm files and a couple of unkowns.

You downloaded the SRPMs?

You should have downloaded the regular .iso files (each is one big file, about 700MB in size).

On this page, they are the lower four .iso files, titled FC2-i386-disc1.iso through FC2-i386-disc4.iso.

Grand Master

markwolfe Veteran

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Now that I know what to download, how do I burn it? As a boot disc or what? I wish I could just go buy pre made cd's for 5-10 bucks somewhere jeez.

Where do you live?

I will mail at no cost, if needed. However, it may be better to contact a local LUG (Linux User's Group) and get some direct assistance - they will even load up your PC and show you a few basics while you are there.

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DAaaMan64

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That would be cool mark, I live in Spokane Washington, oposite side of Seattle. I wonder if there is a linux group here... There appears to be one that is meeting this week. If the site is up to date I will look into it....... Thanks for the heads up. Maybe they can help install this thing, I can also really use the beginners help too.

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Fredde87

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if you have the ISO files downloaded now, you just start nero.. Close the wizard (the box that opens), press file open... Change the bottom drop downbox that says "All nero compilations and Images" to "Image files (*.nrg, *.iso, *.cue)"... The you select the downloaded ISO file... And Press open, now just press burn.. Now you are ready to go....

Grand Master

Barney T. Administrators

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Lots of reviews here:

http://www.google.com/search?q=fedora+core...=utf-8&oe=utf-8

(Copy and Paste to your URL Window)

good websites for ISO downloads and instructions:

www.linuxiso.org

Barney

Grand Master

Keito

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lol.. nice hijack DAaaMan :p

anyways; i found this tutorial on google; http://www.overclockersclub.com/guides/dua...t_fedora_xp.php

and on page three it says something about formatting hda / hdb and so on.

Well I've got one hard drive and I partitioned it in 3 partitions. C, D and E. C is 15GB and had WinXP Pro on it. D is 5GB and the partition I want to install fedora to. And E is 100GB and is the place for my media, backups and games.

In the guide it says "format all partitions" or something like that, does this mean it's going to format everything on the physical harddrisk or does it recognize every partition as a seperate HD... like C = hda and D = hdb etc.

I need some help there please ^__^

(yes I am the uber-n00b :D) Thanks in advance!

Grand Master

markwolfe Veteran

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Well I've got one hard drive and I partitioned it in 3 partitions. C, D and E. C is 15GB and had WinXP Pro on it. D is 5GB and the partition I want to install fedora to. And E is 100GB and is the place for my media, backups and games.

In the guide it says "format all partitions" or something like that, does this mean it's going to format everything on the physical harddrisk or does it recognize every partition as a seperate HD... like C = hda and D = hdb etc.

I need some help there please ^__^

(yes I am the uber-n00b :D) Thanks in advance!

Learning the *nix way of identifying drives is a good first step! And, it makes more sense than the Windows way, where drive letters seem to get shuffled when you add in a new drive.

When you are in Linux, a drive = a disk (the whole drive unit). Every partition in there is just that: a partition. No 'drive letters' are assigned to try to persuede you it is a full separate drive on its own.

So, /dev/hda1 is the first partition on your master drive on your primary IDE channel

and /dev/hda2 is the second partition on your master drive on your primary IDE channel

and so on.

A slave drive on the primary IDE is /dev/hdb, and the partitions are numbered 1-x on there.

The "hd" in hda stands for "hard drive", and is always an IDE device.

There are also "sd" drives. They originally stood for "SCSI drive", but now relate to any serial interface (think "serial drive"). SCSI drives, SATA, USB thumb drives, FireWire hard drives are all /dev/sd_ types of drives.

Does that help? :unsure:

Grand Master

Keito

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clears things up markjensen, but i'm still wondering how fedora will act when i install it and tell it to go and install itself on my D: partition (which'd be /dev/hda2 or something)

Currently that partition is formatted to FAT32, and I don't know how to get it to ext3 or whatever Fedora uses ^^; So if someone could tell me how to prepare that partition for a fedora install and what I have to choose when installing that'd be all, then i'd be off rebooting with CD1 in my drive :p

[edit]

I just read some things about a nasty bug in Linux distro's using the 2.6kernel, it somehow f's up your partition table or something. It said saomething about recovering such things with "sfdisk"... can someone explain what that all means. Is it really that bad to install Fedora and Windows on the same drive in direfent partitions? Those kind of articles always make me change my mind about installing Linux :p...

Let's say I do have another harddrive, then it'l be hda and hdb, and i could install linux to hdb, but how will dual booting work, to what drive do I have to install the boot manager and if somethings fails and I unplug hdb, what'll happen then? :p

Thanks again for all answers... (/me feels like uber-n00b)

Edited by Keito
Grand Master

markwolfe Veteran

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The best way to make sure that you don't make errors when telling the Linux installer to use a specific partition is to manually remove that partition with whichever tool (Partition Magic, fdisk at the command line) you are comfortable with. Then tell the the installer to use the 'unparitioned' or 'unused' space on the drive. (Y)

As for the problems dual-booting with a 2.6 kernel, this can be fixed ahead of time by setting your BIOS to use LBA mode on your hard drive. This is newer than the old CHS (cylinder, head, sector) method. The problem is that in calculating a drive geometry, Linux may use more than 255 heads. Windows does not like this number (apparently they use a byte for this data). CHS is arbitrary anyhow, as new drives don't really have 63 heads, but the capacity has exceeded the point where CHS is a valid representation of the physical characteristics of the drive.

It is safe to install. LBA will prevent problems. And, even if you run into this, you can force a number in the Head value that Windows will be happy with.

When it comes time to install LILO or GRUB (your boot managers), let it put it into the Master Boot Record (MBR) of your boot/first drive. It will be the default selection. If you choose any other option, you will have to set up the dual-booting yourself.

Grand Master

Keito

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Ok, last question and I'm off to install :p

The situation is as following; I want to install linux to a partition I already have, I suppose I could merge it with my other partition (non-winXP one) but if I tell linux to make a partition of the big one, it'll cause me data-loss I guess... So is it possible to just tell fedora to install to that single, existing partition... and most importantly; wil it format it to the right filesystem?

Grand Master

Schmoove

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Ok, last question and I'm off to install :p

The situation is as following; I want to install linux to a partition I already have, I suppose I could merge it with my other partition (non-winXP one) but if I tell linux to make a partition of the big one, it'll cause me data-loss I guess... So is it possible to just tell fedora to install to that single, existing partition... and most importantly; wil it format it to the right filesystem?

This is what I normally do. I create empty space in Windows with Partition Magic, so no EXT2 or 3 partitions, but just empty space, right after my Windows partitions. Then I pop in the Fedora DVD and reboot... now just choose to auto partition when it asks you and tell it to use the empty space... easy as 1,2,3.

Installing Fedora is as easy as installing Windows, every idiot can do it.

Grand Master

markwolfe Veteran

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Huh? :blink:

Instead of telling Fedora which existing partition to use, just clean a partition out yourself (move files, if needed, then remove the partition using fdisk or something, so it is not even partitioned).

When it comes to installing, tell Fedora to use "unused/unparitioned" space for installing, and it will set it all up (including formatting) for you automatically.

It will make three partitions.

A root partition, designated by a slash, "/". This is where everything is referenced from.

A 'boot' partition, designated by "/boot". Technically, this can be left as part of the root parititon, but Fedora defaults to separating it out. This makes sure that you cannot over-fill your working drivespace (root, home, whatnot) with so much data that it no longer has room to store your kernels (which are put into /boot). Don't worry about this now, just let it do its thing. :D

Finally, a swap partition. Linux typically uses a full separated partition for memory swap operations. Just different from Windows.

As for the questions... :)

Many first-timers are most concerned about the install, but it usually is very painless, as long as defaults are used, and no manual 'tweaking' is done (like removing the swap, thinking it isn't needed, or installing GRUB to the Linux partition, instead of the MBR).

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