Boot failure on FC4 install

[Matthew Saltzman]

On Fri, 8 Jul 2005, Tony Nelson wrote:

> At 4:48 PM -0400 7/8/05, Matthew Saltzman wrote:
> ...
>> FC3 on that machine has no trouble reading the CDs.  I can't even boot the
>> CD far enough to carry out the media check step on that machine.  The CDs
>> pass the media check with no trouble on other machines.  As I said, I've
>> installed from them on other machines, and a boot.iso CD that I burned on
>> the drive in the machine in question also does not boot on that machine.
>
> OK, so this shows that the CD drive in that machine can actually read this
> particular CD.  The problem must be in FC4 software.

That's what I was thinking.  I'm now more sure than ever.

Should I bugzilla this under anaconda or something else?

>
> Umm, have you fiddled around trying other kernel boot options, such as
> "rhgb quiet", or removing "quiet", or type garbage the first time, etc.?

Yep, tried them all.

>
>
>> How can I get the sha1sum of the image on the disc itself?
>
> On another machine, or using FC3.  It should already be installed.  I
> expect that it's not your problem.

Actaully, I was asking for the syntax of a command to do it.  "cat 
/dev/cdrom | sha1sum" won't work if the CD is burned with padding--it 
terminates with a read error and the wrong sum.  I did find a solution 
using dd and specifying the correct block count, and the sha1sum of the CD 
is correct.

So I bought an ATAPI DVD writer (nice little Pioneer dual-layer number on 
sale at a local big-box electronics retailer for $60 after annoying 
mail-in rebate).  Got that installed (had to return one defective unit) 
and FC4 booted and installed fine from there using the same disks.

FWIW, FC4 is working pretty well so far on machines I have it installed on 
except for Network Manager (known driver issue) and gnome-pilot.

-- 
 		Matthew Saltzman

Clemson University Math Sciences
mjs AT clemson DOT edu
http://www.math.clemson.edu/~mjs