I have 5 machines. I've installed Fedora 8 on two of them so far. The other 3 have their own unique problems. One machine I did install on is a thinkpad t43 from work. The hard drive is /dev/sda. Windows XP is on /dev/sda1, fedora 8 is on /dev/sda2 and swap is on /dev/sda3. For my 3 problem machines I am thinking if I can get them to boot from my usb memory stick (4G Kingston Data Traveler) then I am part way there. On my work machine the usb thingy looks like a usb hard drive, say /dev/sdb. I've tried to do `dd if=images/diskboot.img of=/dev/sdb' and get `IO ERROR' trying to boot from it. Then `dd if=images/diskboot.img of=/dev/sdb1' after using fdisk to clear the borken partition table from the first try. Attempting to boot from that results in a blinking cursor. Aha, I think, /dev/sdb needs a MBR. So I tried grub-install. That didn't work. Now on this machine I have not modified the MBR. If I want to boot linux then I have a CD with grub on it that will boot either /dev/sda1 (XP) or /dev/sda2 (linux). When I install linux, I install grub on /dev/sda2. So if the CD is not inserted XP boots right up. If the CD is inserted then a grub menu appears, do nothing, then grub is booted on /dev/sda2, do nothing, then latest kernel is booted. This sorta disguises the fact that I have linux on the machine. So when I did the grub-install (from above) it (unexpectedly to me) messed up /dev/sda2 (I was trying to install it to /dev/sdb). So I can't boot my linux partition anymore. I boot up the Fedora 8 install DVD in rescue mode. This is where I messed up. I meant to do grub-install on /dev/sda2 (linux partition) but did it on /dev/sda1 (XP partition) instead. I realized my error and fixed grub on /dev/sda2 but now I can't boot XP on /dev/sda1. This is kinda important to me cause I can (could) connect to work from home using a proprietary VPN and a proprietary remote desktop & do my shit as opposed to driving in 20 miles in the middle of the night. So any ideas on how to fix the XP problem? Anyway, how do I create a bootable Fedora 8 bootdisk.img on my memory stick? For my first problem machine I think a network install will work nicely. Screen, keyboard, harddrive, eth0 work; no dvd/cd; usb is flaky enough that install from usb dvd doesn't work, but I think I can do an ftp (say) install if I can boot from the usb memory stick. The second problem machine is a headless machine. No keyboard, video card, monitor, cd/dvd. It does have a serial port that connects to another machine that has a serial port; minicom works fine. Also has a usb port. Can I boot bootdisk.img from a usb stick and do a headless install? The third problem machine is a thinkpad G41. Seems the inverter to the backlight has gone bad so you can't see anything on the screen. It doesn't have a serial port. Any good ideas on how to update this machine? Greg Smith
