My goal is to install Fedora 7 on my currently existing WinXP system. To accomplish this, I have installed a second hard drive (identical to the first) upon which I plan to install Fedora. This should give me a dual boot option. I acquired the book Fedora 7 and Red Hat Enterprise LINUX Bible (by Christopher Negus) and it has a Live CD as well as a DVD that supposedly can be used for the full install. In running the installation, a few questions come up. I choose to wipe out the existing sdb drive (second drive, right?) and use it for the installation. There is also an option asking "which drive do you want to boot from?" Why would this be different from the drive I'm installing to? I assume I'll boot from the sdb drive, which is my target installation. Also, I'm allowing GRUB to be installed, but again there's a discrepancy between the installation drive and the boot from drive. I go through the standard process and regardless of whether I choose specific options or if I choose the default installation options, I inevitably get an error. The drive seems to format fine and then the installation starts. Very soon after I get an error stating the "<some file> could not be found or opened" and I have no option but to stop the installation. I've tried to look for options for the vmlinuz command, but I can't seem to find anything that would reference this type of error. I should also mention that I've tried the install 4 times and I've seen 3 different filenames - pciutils-devl..., gparted..., and another I don't recall. Any help would be GREATLY appreciated! -Kirk

Quote: Original post by kirkd
The drive seems to format fine and then the installation starts. Very soon after I get an error stating the "<some file> could not be found or opened" and I have no option but to stop the installation.

So, the installer tells you it can’t open a file? Well, that sounds like corrupt installation CD – at least that’d be the simplest cause.

You can always get a “Minimal” installation CD from which you just boot and the installer fetches latest versions of all the packages you want to install from the net. I’d personally prefer this over an installation purely from CDs. At least you minimise the chances of burning bad images this way. [smile]

I've had a lot of problems with installing Fedora too. If you want to stick with Fedora, I'd recommend downloading the latest version and making sure that the checksum is valid (i.e., the file was completely downloaded and is intact).

Of course, if I were you, I'd just use Ubuntu [wink]

I agree with Captain_Thunder. I once had a dual boot of Ubuntu 7.04 and Windows XP until I realized that I didn't use linux that much. It was quite easy. All I did was installed Windows XP slipping my HD to 30GB each and when I installed Ubuntu it recognized that Windows XP was on my system and said it will no load some program that let me switch to either Ubuntu, Ubuntu Kernel, or Windows XP right when my computer booted up. Sure enough it was that easy, and I didn't have not one problem.

Plus, Ubuntu 7.10 is out for Beta. I recommend getting that.

Good Luck on getting linux working.

Thanks for the replies. I've decided at this point to download a Fedora KDE Live CD iso and KUbuntu Live CD iso (I like KDE over Gnome). I'll try to get those working individually and decide which I like. Once I'm at that stage, would it be silly to just install the Live version and then follow up with adding that other packages I want individually?

-Kirk

I don't think so. That's what I did a little while ago when I installed Fedora 7. I just installed from the live cd and then downloaded the other stuff I wanted. Pretty painless.

Also, not to insult the community here, but may I recommend these Linux forums? They were a tremendous help to me when I was getting started, not to mention the quick responses I received.

Hope this helps,
Svenjamin