FC8 installs, but on reboot, it's gone!

[Annoyingrob]

I'm trying to set up Fedora Core 8 on an old PIII 800 I have lying around, and am having a really weird problem.

System specs, PIII 800, 512mb ram, Rage 128, 10gb IDE hd.

I installed a DVD drive, it boots the FC8 disk no problem, I tell it to wipe the disk and set up new partitions, tell it what to install, it sits there, and installs all of the packages. Finally, it tells me it's complete, and to reboot.

When it reboots, the computer halts with a "Boot error, insert floppy disk", indicating that it's not finding anything to boot. Upon loading the install again, it says the drive is empty.

What's going on? Is the installer not saving the partition tables properly? I have no idea where to start looking regarding this problem.

BTW, this is the i386 ISO I've downloaded, but I've had no issues with the X86_64 iso on other machines.

 

[~(o)-(0)~]

I think i had a similar issue back a few years ago, it was something in how the BIOS handled teh drive, like LBA mode or whatever...maybe you can loom into that.

 

[Annoyingrob]

I'll take a look, but it's an old dell, there aren't THAT many options in the bios.

 

[~(o)-(0)~]

it'll probably be where you see ur IDE devices, to the right of the specific device, if thats any help

 

[curtis1552]

Have you checked your boot order yet?

Did grub get configured properly?

 

[Annoyingrob]

I did some more troubleshooting:

I modified the bios settings, but all they had was DMA and PIO modes, as well as LBA, which was already enabled.

It turns out, the OS is installing, but the computer won't run grub. I've tried installing grub on the MFT, as well as on the boot partition, I've swapped the drive from master to slave, I even swapped out another hard drive, but it won't boot grub for some reason.

I ran fdisk, and the partition IS bootable too.

 

[curtis1552]

I believe that there is a way to create a GRUB boot disk, you might have to go that route as a permanent setup.

4. How to create a GRUB boot floppy with the menu interface?

1. Create a filesystem in your floppy disk (e.g. mke2fs /dev/fd0).
2. Mount the floppy on somewhere, say, /mnt.
3. Copy the GRUB images to the directory /mnt/boot/grub. Only stage1, stage2 and menu.lst are necessary. You may not copy *stage1_5.
4. Unmount the floppy.
5. Run the following commands (note that the executable grub may reside in a different directory in your system, for example, /usr/sbin):

   /sbin/grub --batch --device-map=/dev/null <<EOF
   device (fd0) /dev/fd0
   root (fd0)
   setup (fd0)
   quit
   EOF

Pulled from http://www.gnu.org/software/grub/grub-faq.en.html#q4

HEY! In your bios is the MBR write protected? As a jumper on the MOBO?
That could be the problem.

Here's my favorite GRUB configuration tool:
http://supergrub.forjamari.linex.org/
SUPERGRUB

 

[Annoyingrob]

I don't know if the MBR is write protected. That's an interesting theory. I've reformatted the machine a few times, but every time was re-installing the same OS, so maybe I didn't notice.

I'll take a look, and see if I can find a jumper for that. Failing that, I will put grub on a floppy permanently.

 

[Annoyingrob]

hey, I just realized something! My hard drive is detected as SDA in teh fedora install as opposed to HDA. (it's an IDE drive). Would that be important?

Edit: no, I don't think it's important.

Anyways, I tried booting up super grub boot disk, and fixing the grub installation, but it can't find it. I tried running the rescue console, and re-running grub-install, but nothing changed.

 

[Annoyingrob]

ok, this is really weird. I reset the BIOS, and it works fine.


gah!

 

[Misfit138]

hey, I just realized something! My hard drive is detected as SDA in teh fedora install as opposed to HDA. (it's an IDE drive). Would that be important?

Edit: no, I don't think it's important.

With the latest libata and PATA modules in the kernel, IDE will appear as SCSI/SATA.