I have finally found the time to upgrade my desktop machine from (ahem) F16 to F20.
It is my habit to have 2xOS partitions, 1 partition for /home and 1 for swap. Each time I upgrade I actually do a clean install in the last-but-one OS partition (i.e. in this case where the F15 had previously been) leaving the current (i.e. in this case F16) untouched. This way I can simply mount the previous install and copy across any configs etc.
I used a (tested) F20 64bit full install DVD (not the live disk).
I could make neither head nor tail of the new anaconda partitioning system (and I still don't know if I will have successfully pointed the F20 install to the existing /home partition - I know it seemed to insist on creating it's own /swap even though there is a partition dedicated to that and formatted as such for the existing F16 install).
Anyway the first attempt failed completely - locking at the screen where you have to create a root password and user.
The second attempt seemed to go through OK, installing all the packages etc. but I had to take a phone call at the point where it said it was doing "post-installation configuration". By the time I came back, the screen was informing me that Fedora 20 had been successfully installed - reboot to start using it.
The reboot put me back into my old F16 install (at least I know that hasn't been screwed up!) with the grub menu offering me only varying kernels from F16.
It seems F20 has not installed the bootloader properly.
What are the steps for getting F20 to boot (while, if possible still giving me the option to boot into F16)?
Thanks
Mark
On Tue, 2014-04-22 at 12:17 +0100, Arthur Dent wrote:
The reboot put me back into my old F16 install (at least I know that hasn't been screwed up!) with the grub menu offering me only varying kernels from F16.
It seems F20 has not installed the bootloader properly.
What are the steps for getting F20 to boot (while, if possible still giving me the option to boot into F16)?
OK - So now I'm really flummoxed. Here's what I did: I booted into the F16 install. I ran os-prober which found the new F20 kernel on the other partition (it still listed it below all the F16 ones) and ran grub2-mkconfig -o /boot/grub2/grub.cfg
This allowed me to reboot and see the new F20 install (listed about half-way down the list of choices on the grub menu). The F16 install is still the default. I was then able to boot into this 3.11.10-301.fc20.x86_64 kernel. I did a bit of tinkering (pointed /home to the /home partition etc) and then ran yum update.
This brought in the latest kernel (3.13.10-200.fc20.x86_64). I ran os-prober and grub2-mkconfig -o /boot/grub2/grub.cfg again. For good measure I even installed grub-customizer and, sure enough, running that showed a lovely list with 3.13 at the top, 3.11 beneath it and 3.6 (F16) below that. My thinking here is that I am booted *into the F20 kernel* therefore any changes will now be written to /boot *here*.
A save and a reboot and...
Back to the original grub screen...
F16 kernels at the top, the 3.11 F20 kernel below them and NO 3.13 kernel listed!
So when I run grub2-mkconfig -o /boot/grub2/grub.cfg from within the F20 kernel where is it writing to and why isn't the bootloader seeing it?
Any help much appreciated. I can boot into F20 at least now (but not the latest kernel) but i have to do it manually (the default it still the F16 kernel).
Thanks
Mark
On 04/22/2014 12:53 PM, Arthur Dent wrote:
On Tue, 2014-04-22 at 12:17 +0100, Arthur Dent wrote:
The reboot put me back into my old F16 install (at least I know that hasn't been screwed up!) with the grub menu offering me only varying kernels from F16.
It seems F20 has not installed the bootloader properly.
What are the steps for getting F20 to boot (while, if possible still giving me the option to boot into F16)?
OK - So now I'm really flummoxed. Here's what I did: I booted into the F16 install. I ran os-prober which found the new F20 kernel on the other partition (it still listed it below all the F16 ones) and ran grub2-mkconfig -o /boot/grub2/grub.cfg
This allowed me to reboot and see the new F20 install (listed about half-way down the list of choices on the grub menu). The F16 install is still the default. I was then able to boot into this 3.11.10-301.fc20.x86_64 kernel. I did a bit of tinkering (pointed /home to the /home partition etc) and then ran yum update.
This brought in the latest kernel (3.13.10-200.fc20.x86_64). I ran os-prober and grub2-mkconfig -o /boot/grub2/grub.cfg again. For good measure I even installed grub-customizer and, sure enough, running that showed a lovely list with 3.13 at the top, 3.11 beneath it and 3.6 (F16) below that. My thinking here is that I am booted *into the F20 kernel* therefore any changes will now be written to /boot *here*.
A save and a reboot and...
Back to the original grub screen...
F16 kernels at the top, the 3.11 F20 kernel below them and NO 3.13 kernel listed!
So when I run grub2-mkconfig -o /boot/grub2/grub.cfg from within the F20 kernel where is it writing to and why isn't the bootloader seeing it?
Any help much appreciated. I can boot into F20 at least now (but not the latest kernel) but i have to do it manually (the default it still the F16 kernel).
Thanks
Mark
I had this same problem. I install F20 on a second drive, Like sdb instead of sda ?? I put a second drive in computer sdb and installed F20 on it but i couldn't boot into F20 sdb it kept going back to F18 on sda, after all the work on Grub2, the only way I could get it to work was to put the NEW drive in as sda from sdb and original sda with F18 on it as sdb by changing the cables on drives. I then reinstalled F20 on sda and walla I can boot up on F20, F18, and Windows 7.
I don't know your configuration but that is how I got into work. LOL!
On Tue, 2014-04-22 at 20:22 -0400, Jim wrote:
On 04/22/2014 12:53 PM, Arthur Dent wrote:
I had this same problem. I install F20 on a second drive, Like sdb instead of sda ?? I put a second drive in computer sdb and installed F20 on it but i couldn't boot into F20 sdb it kept going back to F18 on sda, after all the work on Grub2, the only way I could get it to work was to put the NEW drive in as sda from sdb and original sda with F18 on it as sdb by changing the cables on drives. I then reinstalled F20 on sda and walla I can boot up on F20, F18, and Windows 7.
I don't know your configuration but that is how I got into work. LOL!
Well, here's my case. F20 (and indeed F16) ARE on sdb. I used to have Windows on sda and my various linux partitions on sdb. Long ago I blew away Windows and use the sda drive as additional storage.
Installing F14,15,&16 on sdb (with nothing bootable on sda) was never a problem. F20 seemed to be unable to update the bootloader properly (even though - on a second install, which I watched this time - it said "Installing Bootloader").
Doing grub2-mkconfig -o /boot/grub2/grub.cfg and even grub2-install /dev/sdb from the F20 partition still failed to update it.
The way I eventually got it to work was by downloading the boot-repair live-CD (http://sourceforge.net/p/boot-repair-cd/home/Home/) and running it over the system. I have no idea what it did, but I now have a bootloader that I can use to boot into F20 (including the latest kernel - which, by the way doesn't work - but that will have to be the subject of a different thread...)
On 04/23/2014 03:50 AM, Arthur Dent wrote:
On Tue, 2014-04-22 at 20:22 -0400, Jim wrote:
On 04/22/2014 12:53 PM, Arthur Dent wrote:
I had this same problem. I install F20 on a second drive, Like sdb instead of sda ?? I put a second drive in computer sdb and installed F20 on it but i couldn't boot into F20 sdb it kept going back to F18 on sda, after all the work on Grub2, the only way I could get it to work was to put the NEW drive in as sda from sdb and original sda with F18 on it as sdb by changing the cables on drives. I then reinstalled F20 on sda and walla I can boot up on F20, F18, and Windows 7.
I don't know your configuration but that is how I got into work. LOL!
Well, here's my case. F20 (and indeed F16) ARE on sdb. I used to have Windows on sda and my various linux partitions on sdb. Long ago I blew away Windows and use the sda drive as additional storage.
Installing F14,15,&16 on sdb (with nothing bootable on sda) was never a problem. F20 seemed to be unable to update the bootloader properly (even though - on a second install, which I watched this time - it said "Installing Bootloader").
Doing grub2-mkconfig -o /boot/grub2/grub.cfg and even grub2-install /dev/sdb from the F20 partition still failed to update it.
The way I eventually got it to work was by downloading the boot-repair live-CD (http://sourceforge.net/p/boot-repair-cd/home/Home/) and running it over the system. I have no idea what it did, but I now have a bootloader that I can use to boot into F20 (including the latest kernel
- which, by the way doesn't work - but that will have to be the subject
of a different thread...)
This is exactly what happen to me, Fedora team has some coding to do. Thanks for the info on ;
http://sourceforge.net/p/boot-repair-cd/home/Home/
I sure do wish that I would have had that Disk two days ago.
Without more information, i.e. the grub install command from anaconda.program.log for Fedora 20 and Fedora 16, it's hard to say what the difference is. Since Fedora 16 isn't support anymore I don't know that it matters.
What I can say about Fedora 18/19/20 though is that it only installs grub on an explicitly targeted installation device (drive). So if for example sda wasn't specified as a target device, it will not get grub installed or reinstalled or a prior bootloader overwritten. If only sdb was specified for installation, then the bootloader is only installed on sdb.
The BIOS dictates what drive's bootloader is used. So if your BIOS looks first to sda, and if there's bootloader code on it, then it will execute that code and not what's on sdb. This is not a grub problem, it's not a Fedora installer problem, it's just the way the computer works. If you want it to look at sdb first, then your BIOS needs to support this and explicitly told to use a different drive as the primary boot drive. Or you have to swap drives around to force the BIOS to use the bootloader on what was sdb.
Or you have to manually install grub on sda, which is sometimes tricky. It needs to have a sufficiently sized MBR gap (1MB, meaning partition 1 starts at LBA 2048) so that core.img can be embedded. The core.img is the minimum amount of code necessary to then locate the rest of grub on a different drive.
Chris Murphy
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Arthur Dent -
Chris Murphy -
Mickey