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Dual Booting Notes Fedora Core 5 Linux Installation Notes This document is my notes regarding my newbie attempt at dual booting Red Hat's Fedora Core 5 operating system with Windows XP. It is currently at a very early stage; and is definitely a work in progress. You may wish to print the above document before beginning your installation also. NOTE: Leave out the quotation marks in all of the commands, that I suggest that you type, from this documentation. AND, press enter key after each and every line to execute that command, or line of commands. I don't tell you to hit enter below; after typing each line; at the command line. So remember that part. NOTE: With most pieces of hardware, printers, hard drives, etc., Linux Fedora Core 5 includes the drivers. First assume that the driver is included and try installing with that assumption. If, in the rare instance, that the driver isn't included, then use yum and the repositories as your next option for finding the driver. Go to the vendor LAST in seeking drivers. Remember this when installing your printer. My PC's Initial, Pre-installation, Hardware and Software Configuration
HARDWARE My Warning About Installation Problems and What NOT To Do The first few weeks of my installation I couldn't start X, the GUI portion of the Fedora Core 5 Linux operating system. I couldn't mount the CD-ROM drive, the floppy drive; and had numerous other problems. ALL of that was solved in less than 5 minutes with the editing of the /boot/grub/device.map file. I will get into the solution to these issues in # 5) below. Don't go out and buy a new video card because someone tells you that you don't have enough RAM to run the GUI (because of some lines in the Xlog, or similar file; like I did. And don't try troubleshooting X, the video resolution not coming up to par, as I did; or manually mounting the affected drives; as I did. INSTEAD, edit that device.map file and run the GRUB install command (more in # 5) below). Suggested Pre-Installation Preparations DETERMINE YOUR CURRENT SCREEN RESOLUTION IN WINDOWS XP a) right click your
desktop (the background screen in Windows XP; with all applications
minimized) Read number 11 below to find out
why the above steps are necessary. There's a place in the installation where you can check, and or uncheck, each OS to set one as the default. I would suggest that you keep Windows XP as your default OS. One reason is that, if you're married, as I am, then you'll want to allow your partner to boot into the more user friendly operating system without any hassles. Also it may take a while for you to get everything configured on your Linux OS; things like your email, sound card, etc. Also you will probably want to brush up on using the VI Editor. This is a nice cheat sheet for that application; which you will use to edit configuration files if your GUI doesn't come up; like mine didn't. Once your graphical user interface (GUI) gets successfully loaded, you'll be able to use the gedit text editor, from inside the Red Hat Linux Fedora Core desktop. The VI Editor is good to know for instances when you don't have access to gedit; or for using with older, or more primitive, versions of Unix, or Linux, that don't have access to a graphical text editor. It's also good to know to get a job as well. [OPTIONAL] - DETERMINING WHERE EACH OF YOUR HARD DRIVES, AND OTHER DATA STORAGE DEVICES, ARE; IN CASE YOU HAVE PROBLEMS WITH THE INSTALLATION If you have booting problems, where the Fedora Core 5 operating system boot loader gets bypassed, as I did, then you will want to determine what devices you have where before doing your installation. You might do this step just in case you think that you might have this problem. Or, if you do have the same boot issues, then come back to this step afterwards. You can find out much of this information, about the physical locations of your hard drives, and their positions on those data chains/ribbons, by right clicking the proper driver in device manager, in Windows XP, and choosing properties. The first device, on an IDE cable, is always 0; NOT 1. The CD-ROM position isn't important; as far as this installation goes. But knowing that you have one hard drive as the master, the other as the slave, and that your floppy drive might be, say for instance, the slave on the second IDE chain, as in position hdd, would be helpful. You're probably saying, huh??? What the heck is he talking about???!! You can choose not to do this step, until you run into problems. See # 5) below for further details about what I'm talking about here. You can always come back and do this step later if the boot loader doesn't show up. DETERMINE YOUR INCOMING AND OUTGOING EMAIL SERVERS In Outlook 2003: Tools > Options > Mail Setup (Tab) > Email Accounts... (button) > NEXT > Change (button) > Under "Server Information" you'll see both servers listed. > After writing them down, click CANCEL > CANCEL. Also you will want to make sure that you know what your password is for authenticating in sending out emails. If you don't know this, after you install Thunderbird email, in Fedora Core, you will be able to receive email but not send it. Installing
a single SATA drive (NO RAID) The installation instructions for a SATA drive, for my motherboard, the Gigabyte GA-K8N Ultra-SLI, can be found at: Configuring SATA Hard Drive(s) (Controller: nVIDIA nForce4 Ultra; nVIDIA nForce4 SLI).pdf. These instructions may help you with your SATA drive installation; or they may not. As always, your mileage may vary. These instructions aren't very clear as to installing a single drive though. They're geared towards using RAID (redundant array of inexpensive drives); which implies using multiple drives. And the default BIOS settings for this motherboard, and probably others, is for having multiple hard drives, in one RAID array, also. Because of the above, you will need to make several changes to your PC's BIOS to enable it to see the hard drive at all. In another place, on Gigabyte's web site, I found the quote; "Why can't I install OS or get into Windows when just install one SATA (IDE) HDD?"; followed by their answer, "The SATA (IDE) RAID feature is enabled by BIOS default setting. Please get into BIOS while BIOS POST, and make sure the RAID feature is disabled by related BIOS option." Not only is this broken English; but it's also as clear as mud; isn't it!? Set your BIOS to be able to detect the SATA hard drive: 1) Use the DELETE
key, or whichever key that works, to get into your BIOS. NV IDE/SATA RAID
function --- DISABLED 4) Use the down arrow, on your keyboard, to scroll down way beyond what you first see in the INTEGRATED PERIPHERALS screen. Ensure that EVERYWHERE where it says RAID, that that line is DISABLED. If you still have problems, you may wish to unplug the power from your other hard drives, and power up only the SATA drive, and try to boot completely to that drive, to see if the POST sees it. As long as you disable all the lines that say RAID, you should be fine though. Fedora Core 5 came with the drivers necessary to use my Maxtor SATA/150 7200 RPM L0100M0 interface hard drive. After you get the BIOS to see the hard drive, you probably will be able to install your SATA drive, using the FC5 DVD, without loading any additional SATA drivers from the manufacturer. Your mileage may vary of course. To Install into the MBR or not? MOST of my installations attempted to place the GRUB boot loader into the MBR (master boot record) of the primary (hda) drive. But I also tried, in some instances, to install to the first part of the hdb (slave drive), along with the Fedora Core operating system, then use the windows boot.ini file as well. In the case below, I'm installing into the MBR. Some people say not to do this. But I didn't have a problem toasting my MBR; even though I loaded into it close to a dozen times before solving this issue with editing the device.map in number 5 below. After trying the non-MBR installation, and changing the hard drive boot order in my BIOS, my installations booted directly to the > GRUB prompt, on the slave hard drive, with no boot loader. Loading the boot record for Fedora Core 5 into the MBR is the default setting for the normal installation. On the other hand, if you choose to try the advanced boot loader options, during the Fedora Core 5 installation, you can change from installing into the MBR to installing into the first part of the second hard drive. If you choose to install GRUB to the second hard drive, instead of the MBR on the primary drive, you'll need to use a document like How to dual-boot Windows NT/2000/XP and Linux using NTLDR to edit your boot.ini file. I recommend installing into the
MBR and using the following installation method below. It worked for
me with a MINIMAL amount of manual tweaking. When I had my Fedora Core 5 operating system completely installed, and then rebooted, it took quite a bit of time for the old, secondary, hard drive to boot. I knew that the drive was at the end of its life. So I replaced it with a new 100 GB Maxtor SATA drive. There were problems, besides the BIOS, in installing this new hard drive. I ended up having to pull out the old drive before the new operating system was up to speed and running. This meant that I ended up having to try to reinstall the FC5 operating system on the old drive. It's a long story. Don't ask why I needed to do this. This reinstallation of FC5 on the original drive, didn't work; and the MBR ended up getting messed up; completely. I followed the procedure below to repair my MBR. Repairing the MBR: Boot to the Windows XP CD. Hopefully you won't need the above information. But it's better to have it and not need it; than to need it and not have it. :-) Beginning The Installation Preliminary Reading: 1) Read Fedora Core 5 Re-Spin 20060523 Released! - this explains that the open source Fedora Core operating system has been updated by the Fedora community; saving you time in your installation. It explains why you should download the re-spin instead of the official application.
Download Fedora:
Burn the Operating System to a DVD:
Optional Reading: NOTE: I tried following almost all of this gentleman's choices for optional packages to install. I never did find "Windows Server" listed in any of the optional package listings. That's one of his suggestions. My installation kept hanging. In one installation I chose all of his options. In another I chose a number of servers. I never could successfully install either of these sets of applications, servers or his selections successfully without it hanging in the process.
So, I went on and
installed the
default settings; which seem to work just fine.
You CAN, however, install both the gnome and kde desktops without it
hanging. And don't forget to install switchdesk as one of the
options.
That is supposed to help switch between the KDE and the Gnome
desktop. Also try the system tools that he
suggests if you want to learn administrative features for a job; as
I do.
a) press the enter key at the first : prompt presented to
start the installation from the DVD. This starts the installation.
This document, above, has the GUI images and walks you through each page.
There's relatively no difference between the Fedora Core 4 and 5
installations that I can detect.
Also you will want to select, "Remove All Linux Partitions" during your setup as well. This is the default also. I mention it here just so that you'll know that the default setting is the correct one to use. If you ever have to reinstall the FC5 operating system later, having this as the default comes in handy; as you know that your hosed OS will get wiped away along with whatever is messed up in it. There are many documents out there that teach you how to configure GRUB, the boot loader/manager (that allows you to dual boot both of these operating systems). The different methods of learning it, and of dual booting, may confuse you more than help you; as they did me. I suggest that you avoid these documents unless you just want to learn GRUB. We will get into editing the grub.conf file later; but only in a very minor way.
The Problems I Experienced -
After The Initial Installation And the First Reboot 5) MY PC's SYMPTOMS AFTER THE INITIAL FEDORA
CORE 5 INSTALLATION AND FIRST REBOOT:
To fix ALL of the above problems, if you have them, after your first reboot, do the following: a) boot with the Fedora Core 5
Respin DVD (after setting your bios to boot from the CD-ROM drive
first) device.map,
after you edit it, should look something like this: You can find out much of this information by right clicking the
proper driver in
device
manager, in Windows XP, and choosing properties.
The first device, on an IDE cable, is always 0; NOT 1. (hd0) /dev/hda You can see that I have two IDE
(not SCSI) hard drives, hda and hdb.
I also have a floppy drive (fd0) which is an LS-120 super drive.
This super drive acts like a floppy drive, but reads 120MB disks as
well.
And it plugs NOT into the floppy port on the motherboard; but
instead into the secondary (slave), or 1, position on the secondary
IDE chain/ribbon cable.
[Remember everything starts with 0; not 1.]
You don't have to worry about the CD-ROM drive configuration here.
Fedora Core 5 will mount it automatically once the GUI boots
successfully. (hd0) /dev/hda The (hd1) drive is that new Maxtor SATA drive. You'll notice that it's a master drive; NOT a slave like the (hdb) drive, above, that it replaced. 6) #grub-install /dev/hda - type this at the root FC5 prompt, #, after editing the device.map file, while still using the "linux rescue" CD boot, method, above to install GRUB again into the MBR on the primary drive. After having edited the /boot/grub/device.map configuration, this command should then be the last step (as far as special manual configurations go) that you need to get your system back on its feet; so that you can continue with the installation after the initial reboot. So, all you're doing is editing your /boot/grub/device.map configuration and running the command in # 6) above; that's it. These two things fixed my problem with not seeing the boot loader upon boot up. NOTE: As a result of the fact that I left the old hard drive, with FC5 on it, in my machine (so that I could continue booting to Windows XP), this interfered with the installation of the FC5 operating system onto my new SATA hard drive. I realized this, and removed the partitions (and the OS with it) from the old hard drive. This didn't fix the errors. So I pulled out the old hard drive. The one error went away. But the installation on my new SATA drive still wouldn't work. So I had to reinstall FC5 AGAIN on the new hard drive; after having physically removed the old hard drive. So, the moral to this story is, if you are moving from one hard drive to another, with FC5, physically remove the old drive before beginning the installation of FC5 onto the new hard drive; unless you just want to practice installing it multiple times. :-) 7) If the above doesn't work, make sure that you have the following in your /etc/grub.conf file. title Windows XP The above text should already be in your /etc/grub.conf file. But the part that's possibly missing is just for window dressing, so to speak. The title will be listed as Other, instead of Windows XP. So you can put that in to make it clear in the boot loader what OS's that you are booting. 8) [OPTIONAL] "vi /boot/grub/grub.conf" - type this, at the "linux rescue" CD # prompt and then put a # symbol in front of the text "hiddenmenu." This will allow you to see each step that the PC goes through in booting; and may help you in troubleshooting, in the future, should the system not boot for any reason. What you're doing, if you're not familiar with it, is commenting out the hiddenmenu command so that it doesn't execute. 9) remove the Fedora Core 5 DVD and reboot "shutdown -r now" - you normally
type this to reboot Linux. But in my case this didn't/doesn't work;
nor does the command reboot. So I
type: After The Initial Installation And the First Reboot (If the Boot Menu Option Appears Properly) 10) When the graphical boot menu appears, after your very first reboot, press enter to boot into Fedora Core 5 operating system. 11) After both the initial installation, and the reboot, and then having successfully booted into (the final installation segment of) Fedora Core 5, for the first time, it will ask you to continue configuring the operating system. Don't Set Your Screen Resolution Too High NOTE: I accidentally set my screen resolution too high, while completing this phase of the final post boot installation procedure, and this totally hosed Fedora Core 5. FC5 won't pop back into the previous screen resolution if it messes up, like in Windows XP; so be careful here. 1280X1024 is my XP screen resolution; which also works with Fedora Core 5 as well. But your video card may not get that high of a resolution; or it my get a higher one. Don't pick a screen resolution that your video card can't handle. The easiest way to ensure that this is correct, is to find out what your screen resolution is in Windows XP, and write this down, BEFORE you begin your installation. After finishing the installation, reboot. Establish Connectivity 12) Boot into Fedora Core 5 (through the boot manager) as you normally would. Check your connectivity by going into the internet browser
application supplied with Fedora Core 5. It's up on the top of the
screen; one of the little icons. PROBLEM: I was able to run "yum -y install" successfully (ie: I was connected to the internet), while using the "linux rescue" CD boot method; but there was NO connectivity from within X, the graphical user interface of Fedora Core 5. After logging into the FC5 GUI, I then used cntrl/alt/F1
to get to a login (command) prompt quickly; and typed. Notice that the command is NOT
ipconfig; but ifconfig. and I got the response: lo Then I typed: and I got the response: shutting down loopback interface
OK NOTE: If you have put a # sign before the word hiddenmenu, as shown in step 8) above, then you will see the same failure each time the system starts up also; if you have these same issues that is. What's even more interesting, is that, once you fix your connectivity, that that same failure will still come up. In other words, it must initialize the network card, successfully, later in the boot process. ANSWER: Refer
to
Network Manager
for more information on how to install and
enable Quotes from the above source: Enabling NetworkManager on Fedora 5
"The installation process for Fedora Core 5 automatically
provides NetworkManager. To enable it, enter the following commands
in a terminal window: Install Your Printer At the top of the screen: System > Administration > Printing > Type in your root password > New (button) > The rest is NEXT (the default/s) to the end of the installation. If you have problems printing with Linux, you might try http://linuxprinting.org. But your best best is to go into IRC and ask the experts. And that's where we're going next. Install IRC (Internet Relay Chat)
IRC will allow you to talk with Red
Hat people, and others, to get help with your Fedora Core operating
system when you get stuck. Mount NTFS Partitions On page 13 of Mauriat Miranda's 18 page, very helpful, document, Personal Fedora Core 5 Installation Guide you will find instructions for mounting your NTFS partition. You will also need to get the module (rpm), for your particular kernel, at Linux-NTFS RPMs Downloads - Fedora 5. And you will find further instructions, which you probably won't need, at Linux-NTFS RPMs Documentation. Customizing Your Boot Loader [OPTIONAL] - If you want to change the default boot order, of which opeerating system it defaults to, lengthen the amount of time that you have to choose between one operating system or the other, remove the listing for an old kernel in the startup screen, see what's going on behind the scene when it boots, etc., then you'll want to read this section.
My /boot/grub/grub.conf grub
configuration file ended up looking like: Another thing is that hiddenmenu is commented out. I did this so that I could see what was going on behind the scenes while the operating system boots. This may come in handy of the OS has problems in the future. I also set the default to 2. The default for the default setting is normally one. 1 makes it default to Fedora Core 5. 2 makes it default to Windows XP; which is what I want. My wife still uses this machine. So I want her to be able to boot, to the easier OS, without problems. Plus I still use Windows XP more often also. Also you may notice that the timeout is set to 15. The default is 5; which gives you 5 seconds to decide on which OS that you want to load. I would prefer to have a little longer to decide. So I chose to set that to 15 seconds.
If you want to edit your boot up
menu options, just go to a terminal session and type: Post BASIC Configuration Tweaking Next go to Fedora Core 5 Linux Installation Notes and follow his instructions to complete the installation. MORE TO FOLLOW MOMENTARILY!!! |