Re: can't boot fresh install

[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]

 



On Sun, Aug 9, 2009 at 7:19 AM, Mikkel L.
Ellertson<mikkel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> G.Wolfe Woodbury wrote:
>> On 08/09/2009 04:17 AM, Alan Evans wrote:
>>> I'm still confused about how anaconda can possibly mount a partition
>>> (two, including the boot partition) when fdisk thinks the partition
>>> table is invalid.
>>
>> The kernel is capable of dealing with HFS (Apple) partitions!
>>
>> I suspect that you failed to zero the MBR before moving the drive from
>> the Mac to the Linux box.  If you use the hfsutils or hfsplus-tools
>> package you'll get a set of tools that can "see" the partitions for that
>> drive. Thes tools are not installed by default. ("yum info *hfs*")
>>
>> Good luck.
>>
> I wounder if LILO would work? It doesn't under file systems at all.
> But I am not sure if the scripts run when you update the kernel work
> with LILO.
>
> Then again, the BIOS may refuse to boot if it does not find a DOS
> partition table. I could be way off base, but I suspect that the
> installer saw a MAC formated disk, and acted like it was installing
> on an iMAC.

Ok. Given the totality of my experience so far combined with the many
replies I've received in this thread, I was inclined to believe that
starting with a Mac-formatted disk was really causing me serious
trouble.

I really need a working system here, so i decided to save an image of
the hard drive and start fresh. I dd'd the hard drive onto another,
external drive in case I ever wanted it back, then I used fdisk to fix
the apparently broken partition table. For good measure, I even
created a dummy partition and ran mke2fs on it to assure the drive was
in good shape.

I ran the installer again and selected to install a new system. Now
anaconda bails out with an exception, the error under "Details"
appears to be:

  NotImplementedError: Partition 3 isn't aligned to cylinder
boundaries. This is still unsupported.

(I can't seem to save the whole stack trace -- doesn't seem to want to
find my thumb drive.)

So, whereas before anaconda was happy but fdisk didn't recognize the
partition table, now fisk is satisfied that all is ok and anaconda
can't deal with it. WHAT IN THE NAME OF EVERYTHING THAT IT GOOD AND
TRUE IS WRONG WITH ANACONDA? Aaaaaaarrrgh!

> Before blowing away the install, it would be interesting to see if
> parted could salvage things. If nothing else, you could copy down
> the start/end of the partition, create a DOS partition table, and
> then use the numbers to re-create the partition. Just make sure you
> do not let parted format the new file system.

Well, I did save a copy of the old drive, so I should be able to get
back the old situation. (But it should be easily reproduceable by
first installing MacOSX then trying to install Fedora.) Right now, my
top priority is getting a functional system.

Tomorrow, I'm going to grab a LiveCD from work and see if I can
successully accomplish the install from that.

>  Do not meddle in the affairs of dragons,
> for thou art crunchy and taste good with Ketchup!

Good advice. Thanks.

-Alan
(Frustrated and exhausted, but hopeful.)

-- 
fedora-list mailing list
fedora-list@xxxxxxxxxx
To unsubscribe: https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-list
Guidelines: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Communicate/MailingListGuidelines

[Index of Archives]     [Current Fedora Users]     [Fedora Desktop]     [Fedora SELinux]     [Yosemite News]     [Yosemite Photos]     [KDE Users]     [Fedora Tools]     [Fedora Docs]

  Powered by Linux