FC 6 Install is stalled

[Stan Dereska]

Sir,
After buying a SAM's book and CD from a Microcenter a few days ago, I  
tried to follow the installation
procedure using a CD but my PC failed to recognize an OS (I've erased  
the hard drive which had Win XP).
The book describes an install procedure using a CD from  a program  
called "kickstart" that causes my
machine to recognize the CD, I believe.  How do I boot up to install  
FC 6 ? Where can I download kickstart ?
I'm new to Unix and Linux .  Thanx for your assistance.
Regards,  Stan Dereska   a k a sdereska(a)verizon.net

[Tod Merley]

On 6/12/07, Stan Dereska <sdereska(a)verizon.net&gt; wrote:
>  Sir,
>  After buying a SAM's book and CD from a Microcenter a few days ago, I
>  tried to follow the installation
>  procedure using a CD but my PC failed to recognize an OS (I've erased
>  the hard drive which had Win XP).
>  The book describes an install procedure using a CD from  a program
>  called "kickstart" that causes my
>  machine to recognize the CD, I believe.  How do I boot up to install
>  FC 6 ? Where can I download kickstart ?
>  I'm new to Unix and Linux .  Thanx for your assistance.
>  Regards,  Stan Dereska   a k a sdereska(a)verizon.net
>
>  --
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>  To unsubscribe: https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-list
>  
Hi Stan!

I only have a short time here and will probably not be back on the
forum for some time.  For us to help you you will need to suppy more
information:

Computer Brand, Model, type of HD or other storage.

What you are trying to install, and from what (a CD - a DVD - where
did you get the DVD.

How did you set the CD or DVD to boot (be recognized as an operateing
system sourch).

Can you download ISO images to make your own CDs?  You might want to
do so and get the latest Fedora.

Please let us know.

Tod

[Steve Searle]

Around 11:34pm on Tuesday, June 12, 2007 (UK time), Stan Dereska scrawled:

>  After buying a SAM's book and CD from a Microcenter a few days
> ago, I  
>  tried to follow the installation
>  procedure using a CD but my PC failed to recognize an OS (I've erased  
>  the hard drive which had Win XP). 

Was the PC able to boot from the installation CD?  If not, then can
you check the BIOS setting to check that it is set to boot from the CD.

Steve

-- 

A:  Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text.
Q:  Why is top-posting a bad thing?

 23:53:23 up 22 min,  3 users,  load average: 0.00, 0.00, 0.02

[Kam Leo]

On 6/12/07, Stan Dereska <sdereska(a)verizon.net&gt; wrote:
>  Sir,
>  After buying a SAM's book and CD from a Microcenter a few days ago, I
>  tried to follow the installation
>  procedure using a CD but my PC failed to recognize an OS (I've erased
>  the hard drive which had Win XP).
>  The book describes an install procedure using a CD from  a program
>  called "kickstart" that causes my
>  machine to recognize the CD, I believe.  How do I boot up to install
>  FC 6 ? Where can I download kickstart ?
>  I'm new to Unix and Linux .  Thanx for your assistance.
>  Regards,  Stan Dereska   a k a sdereska(a)verizon.net
>  
Stan, you do not download kickstart. Kickstart is a costumizing
installation. You want the default FC6 installation discs. You can
download them using a BitTorrent client from
http://torrent.fedoraproject.org/ or get media from
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Distribution.

[Jim Cornette]

Stan Dereska wrote:
>  Sir,
>  After buying a SAM's book and CD from a Microcenter a few days ago, I 
>  tried to follow the installation
>  procedure using a CD but my PC failed to recognize an OS (I've erased 
>  the hard drive which had Win XP).
>  The book describes an install procedure using a CD from  a program 
>  called "kickstart" that causes my
>  machine to recognize the CD, I believe.  How do I boot up to install FC 
>  6 ? Where can I download kickstart ?
>  I'm new to Unix and Linux .  Thanx for your assistance.
>  Regards,  Stan Dereska   a k a sdereska(a)verizon.net
>   
The installation media usually boots into an installer which will allow 
setting up the hard drive for default settings and allow minor 
customization of packages and groups of programs.

I've been using Linux for awhile and have not yet tried out kickstart. 
Kickstart s for automation of the install process for making many 
similar installations without sitting dwn and monitoring the 
installation on a step by step basis.

If your install medium does not brig up an installer, it would probably 
be wiser to download the installation medioum and burn them and then 
installing from the CDs or DVD that you downloaded the images from.

Jim

-- 
How come financial advisors never seem to be as wealthy as they
claim they'll make you?.

[Tim]

On Tue, 2007-06-12 at 18:34 -0400, Stan Dereska wrote:
>  After buying a SAM's book and CD from a Microcenter a few days
> ago, I
>  tried to follow the installation procedure using a CD but my PC failed
>  to recognize an OS (I've erased the hard drive which had Win XP). 
In what sense was the failure?  The same as your next paragraph, or
something else?  (I couldn't tell if you were describing something else
that you've tried, regarding kickstart, or if that was what you tried in
the first place.)

You couldn't boot the CD to start the install?  It went through the
motions of installing, but when you tried to boot the PC, you didn't get
anything?  Something else?

>  The book describes an install procedure using a CD from a program  
>  called "kickstart" that causes my machine to recognize the CD, I
>  believe.  How do I boot up to install FC 6 ? Where can I download
>  kickstart ? 
"kickstart" is a file that can be used by an installer to preselect
everything that you want installing.  It's used by people installing to
several machines, who want to do the same on each box, without having to
manually customise them.  It's just a plain text file, and the install
CD or DVD has all it needs to make use of one, if you have one.

You don't need to use this, you can run the installer and go with the
default options, or customise things through the install routine.

A basic installation recipe is to:

      * Boot your computer from the DVD or CD.  You *may* have to change
        a BIOS option so that it doesn't boot straight from the hard
        drive.  How you do that depends on your computer.  If you need
        advice on that, post *exactly* what model computer or
        motherboard you have.

      * You'll get a menu when you boot from the disc, and you can
        follow the prompts.  All being well, that's about as hard as it
        should get.

      * The install will start, taking somewhere from twenty-minutes
        upwards to complete, depending on the circumstances (speed of
        your hardware, how much you picked to install, etc.).  You're
        shown some information and asked some questions, it's
        interactive.

      * At the finish, you'll be prompted to remove the install disc and
        reboot.  Now you'll go through a few start up questions as it
        boots from the hard drive for the first time.  It should only
        take a few minutes to complete this.

There's installation guides at this address that you might look at:
<http://docs.fedoraproject.org/install-guide/fc6/>

After the installation, there'll be an anaconda-ks.cfg file in the /root
directory.  That's a kickstart file, and it contains the options you
used to install this system.  You could use that file if you wanted to
duplicate the install.

The following is what mine looked like, though I've removed the
passwords and wrote [my password was here].  That's one reason to be
careful of posting kickstart files and using other people's.  Another is
that there's some customisation options that only apply to me (such as
the hard drive partitioning, languages, timezones, etc.).  The rest of
the thing pertains to the groups of packages to be installed (written
after @ signs), particular packages to be installed (the next series of
names), and particular packages not to be installed (the next series of
names, with a - in front of them).  You don't need this, I'm just
showing you what one might look like.

# Kickstart file automatically generated by anaconda.

install
harddrive --partition=sda7 --dir=managing/fedora
lang en_US.UTF-8
keyboard us
xconfig --startxonboot
network --device eth0 --bootproto dhcp
rootpw --iscrypted [my password was here]
firewall --enabled --port=22:tcp
authconfig --enableshadow --enablemd5
selinux --enforcing
timezone --utc Australia/Adelaide
bootloader --location=partition --driveorder=sdb,sda --append="rhgb quiet"
--md5pass=[my password was here]
# The following is the partition information you requested
# Note that any partitions you deleted are not expressed
# here so unless you clear all partitions first, this is
# not guaranteed to work
#clearpart --linux
#part /boot --fstype ext3 --noformat --onpart sdb1
#part /var --fstype ext3 --noformat --onpart sdb5
#part /home --fstype ext3 --noformat --onpart sdb2
#part /tmp --fstype ext3 --noformat --onpart sdb3
#part /usr --fstype ext3 --noformat --onpart sdb8
#part / --fstype ext3 --noformat --onpart sdb6
#part swap --noformat --onpart sda6
#part swap --noformat --onpart sdb7


%packages
@office
@admin-tools
@editors
@system-tools
@british-support
@text-internet
@dns-server
@gnome-desktop
@core
@base
@hardware-support
@games
@java
@base-x
@graphics
@web-server
@dial-up
@printing
@mail-server
@server-cfg
@sound-and-video
@graphical-internet
createrepo
festival
fuse
audit
lynx
pax
fonts-chinese
fonts-korean
fonts-japanese
libsane-hpaio
netpbm-progs
apachetop
awstats
festvox-rms-arctic-hts
festvox-clb-arctic-hts
festvox-bdl-arctic-hts
-planner
-slrn
-cadaver
-mutt
-synaptics
-linuxwacom
-tux
-isdn4k-utils
-rp-pppoe
-evolution-webcal

-- 
[tim@bigblack ~]$ uname -ipr
2.6.22.1-33.fc7 i686 i386

Using FC 4, 5, 6 & 7, plus CentOS 5.  Today, it's FC7.

Don't send private replies to my address, the mailbox is ignored.
I read messages from the public lists.