Another FC 4 Installation Problem! Please help!

Krazy_About_Technology · 23-08-2005, 11:07 PM

Dear Friends,
I have a pentium 4 2.4 ht processesor on an intel 82865GBF mothorboard, 512 mb ram, 80 gb harddisk and an nVIDIA GeForce FX5200 gfx card. My harddisk has 8 partitions, Windows XP is installed on C and FC3 linux is on the last two partions, last one being used as swap. I use grub as my boot manager.
I got the fedora core 4 distro on the DIGIT dvd this month. I wrote the images to the cds using nero 6.6 at 32x with the option to 'verify data after writing' set to on. All the 4 cds were verified correctly.
I started the installation using the first cd, kernel started and all was well till the hardware detection ended. After that i am getting two error messages, first one stating that 'RAMDISK : Creation of ram disk failed.' and second one 'VFS : Unable to mount root filesystem NULL on block device(0,0).'It also prompts me to provide the 'ROOT=' kernel startup parameter. After that a kernel panic occurs and system hangs after printing some hex infomration. The installation is not even started so using text mode or something like that is out of question. It fails before the installer is invoked.
I am a LINUX NEWBIE. I dont know very much about it though i am learning fast. Someone please help me to solve this problem.

gauravnawani · 24-08-2005, 06:40 AM

Well that had happend to me in past. It generally happens with faulty media, I mean not faulty as not usable but it can work some times and it just dont some times. May be I never liked ASUS drives, strangely this problem have never occured after I switched to SONY.

I use to redo the intallation after keeping the the system off for a while. It had worked for me many times.

As fas as I can see you dont seem to be having any wierd hardware config. If you do get through it then make sure that you check all the remainign CD's during installation just to make sure that there is no serious problem with them.

You can also try writing the First CD again if else fails.

QwertyManiac · 25-08-2005, 05:19 PM

NOOOOOOOOOOO
As u say that u have 865 mobo, theres a bug...
do this plz :
enter any garbage and press enter in the boot menu instead of just pressin enter...
wait for a error message...
now just press enter....
Voila !
It goes correctly again...

Satissh S · 26-08-2005, 02:25 PM

@ KAT :
Aha, another 865 & FX 5200 prob with Fedora inst.
Welcome to the group m8!

What happenned for me is that aftr install it resttarted the sys when i attempted to boot into Fedora with gfx card plugged in. Try removing the gfx card and install it. I must work. it worked for me!

QwertyManiac · 26-08-2005, 03:30 PM

does it show a kernel panic ?
try my above mentioned method buddie....
else try satish's meth....

Yathi · 31-08-2005, 05:05 PM

I have installed the FC4 provided with Digit in the month of August. After many attempts I did manage to install it. After the intallation it asked to reboot. But after rebboting I get directly into Windows XP. I don't even see any selection screen. Please help me.

mediator · 01-09-2005, 11:50 AM

Kernel panic is caused when the distro is not recognizing some hardware, in ur case possibly hardisk.
Try to upgrade FC3 instead of new installation!

In case of Yathi, U may have selected third party bootloader! Do the upgrade installation again and only for first cd and choose the grub from menu and just proceed after dat. Installtion will end within 15 minutes!

vignesh · 01-09-2005, 07:49 PM

@ yathi Try installing grub again

Yathi · 02-09-2005, 04:49 PM

When I try to install Grub by the command
grub-install /dev/hdb1 it says /sbin/grub not found.

And I am not able to understand what you are saying mediator. I don't see grub in any menu while installing FC4.

mediator · 02-09-2005, 07:21 PM

I'm not saying to observe grub in FC4 installation.
Any way u said u have 8 partitions on ur one 80 GB hardisk, right?
If dat's the case then lemme remind ya that at max. 4 primary partitions can exist on one hardisk, so when u say u have 8 partitions then last 4 are not primary partitions and to install a linux u got to have it in any of the 4 primary paritions i.e first 4 partitions ! So, I wud advice u to reformat ur disk and create 4 primary paritions instead of 8 and then install de FC4!
If it still causes kernel panic ! Try install FC3 ! If it installs right, then upgrade to FC4! neways I dont think installing FC3 will go right !! But u may still give it a try!

Krazy_About_Technology · 03-09-2005, 09:15 PM

Dear Friends,

After many attempts, i found out the solution for the problem. As i said before, cds were not the culprit since i verified every cd with nero. CDs were Moaser Baer media (52x) and i burnt them on 16x with a brand new LG writer so no chance of corruption here.

I tried this on boot prompt

boot : linux root=/isolinux
[CTRL]+[C]
boot : linux root=/isolinux

After this the installation worked. I got the idea from the message that was given before the kernel panic to specify a valid root. Since for installation program root is the above specified folder so it was sure to work. But as it seems to me now, the solution given by QwertyManiac will work since if my guess was right, it should've worked in the first place, but i needed to press CTRL+C.

And mediator, i'm afraid you are wrong. i have one primary, one secondry and 7 logical drives on the secondary partition on my 80 GB harddrive and GRUB can boot linux from any logical drive. its working like this since RedHat linux 9 and with all Fedora Core installations.

The REAL problem is with the cd boot image of FC4.

Thanx

mediator · 04-09-2005, 02:51 AM

neways thanx 4 correctin me!

vignesh · 04-09-2005, 07:18 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Yathi

When I try to install Grub by the command
grub-install /dev/hdb1 it says /sbin/grub not found.

And I am not able to understand what you are saying mediator. I don't see grub in any menu while installing FC4.

you must first issue the command
chroot /mnt/sysimage

Yathi · 05-09-2005, 03:04 PM

I have 2 hard disks and I am installing Linux in the first partion of my second harddisk.
And when I run chroot/mnt/sysimage it says file not found. Is there some way to get the boot info of linux and then modify the boot.ini of windows to make windows recognise linux?

GNUrag · 05-09-2005, 05:43 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Yathi

I have 2 hard disks and I am installing Linux in the first partion of my second harddisk. And when I run chroot/mnt/sysimage it says file not found.

There should a space after chroot command like this:
chroot <space-bar> /mnt/sysimage

Read the post by firewall in Tips aand Tricks thread. It details the steps of chrooting.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Yathi

Is there some way to get the boot info of linux and then modify the boot.ini of windows to make windows recognise linux?

Search for the bootsect.lnx trick in this section. This is one of them:
http://www.thinkdigit.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=24485