Cannot install Fedora Core 4

[Rick Stevens]

On Tue, 2006-01-17 at 16:13 -0600, Russell Golden wrote:
> no, i already have RHL9 and i'm TRYING to install FC4 on it, either 
> overwriting RHL9 or upgrading it. If I can ever get the stupid thing to 
> work, by the time it's done there will only be one version of Linux on 
> my hard disk.

Ok, so if I understand correctly, you're doing a fresh install of FC4
over the top of RH9 on your second SCSI hard disk and you want your
current boot loader (which isn't grub, but likely ntloader or System
Commander or something) to boot to grub on that fresh install.

If I have that right, I just want you to verify a few things:

1. You've booted the first FC4 CD and actually done the installation,
overwriting RH9.  When you did the installation, you told anaconda
(the FC4 install program) that it that it was to put FC4 in the various
partitions of /dev/sdb, and not /dev/sda (which it will try to do by
default).

2. Now, when you try to boot the FC4 installation, it gets a kernel
panic.

3. If you boot off the first FC4 CD and enter "linux rescue" at the
"boot:" prompt, it still kernel panics.

This is where things get weird.  I've never heard of a kernel panic on
a rescue boot when the installer itself didn't panic when things were
installed.  They use the same kernel (the installer and the rescue).
There's really no way for one to panic and not the other.

What actually occurred, I think, is that you installed FC4 on /dev/sda.
The reason I say this is that you can still succesfully boot RH9.  Had
you actually installed FC4 where you think you did (replacing RH9), then
RH9 has been wiped out it can't boot.  Do you see why I'm confused?

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- Rick Stevens, Senior Systems Engineer     rstevens at vitalstream.com -
- VitalStream, Inc.                       http://www.vitalstream.com -
-                                                                    -
-                   To err is human, to moo bovine.                  -
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