Re: can't boot fresh install

Howard Wilkinson <howard@xxxxxxxxxxx> · Sun, 09 Aug 2009 12:53:35 +0100

Alan,

see in-line ...

Alan Evans wrote:

  On Sun, Aug 9, 2009 at 12:23 AM, Howard Wilkinson wrote:

    Alan Evans wrote:

        Just did a fresh install of F11 on a P4. The SATA hard disk was
repatriated from a broken iMac.

        I didn't have install disks handy, so I downloaded the netinstall
image and installed the whole thing over my home DSL. This took nearly
a day and a half, and I don't want to repeat that process if I can
avoid it.

No install discs so a network install

        I instructed anaconda to remove everything and use the whole drive.
The installer never complained of any trouble. When I went to reboot,
the system refused to recognize the hard drive as bootable. I jacked
around with BIOS settings to no avail. Finally, I booted from the
install CD and select

Now have an install CD - is this for a different version of Fedora?

        ed rescue mode.

        Rescue mode mounted /dev/sda2 on /mnt/sysimage. I looked and the
install appears intact.

Now I remember seeing something on the anaconda list about scanning
discs to find partitions ... not sure what and maybe a Red Herring, but
this has changed in the F11/F12 timeframe so you may have got some of
this functionality.

        I ran fdisk on /dev/sda and it complained, "Device contains neither a
valid DOS partition table, nor Sun, SGI or OSF disklabel." And then
further down, "Warning: invalid flag 0x0000 of partition table 4 will
be corrected by w(rite)." There are no partitions listed when I select
"p" to do so.

        At this point, I'm petrified. What can be done to fix this and get
Fedora to boot?

There is a utility called kpartx that anaconda now uses (I think now is
F11, not the upcoming F12) that can locate partitions - this may help,
not sure.

      Ok, maybe I'm asking the wrong question...

      Does anybody have an idea why anaconda/rescue mode can find and mount
my root partition on /dev/sda2, but fdisk can't even recognize that my
disk has a partition table at all?

    you are running fdisk on /dev/sda and not /dev/sda2?

Thanks for taking an interest in my plight!

I am, indeed, certain that I ran fdisk against the correct device.
I've done it several times. Just confirmed it again.

I asked because that is the silly mistake I make about once every 6
months and I stare at it for hours before realising, usually late at
night after having spent all day building a system.

  I did miss one thing in my original description. I misread the output
from df, which now appears to show /dev/mapper/vg_home-lv_root mounted
on /mnt/sysimage and /dev/sda2 is mounted on /mnt/sysimage/boot. So it
would appear that my boot partition is sda2. (I didn't choose any
special partitioning during install, just accepted the default.)

There must be an sda1 as well, which I had assumed would be your boot
partition. So your disc layout is a bit iffy possibly. You may find the
problem is that the partition table is OK but boot is too far up the
disc. Depends if your fdisk is borked rather than the disc. Try another
partition tool from the F11 collection - if you can see the disc under
the resuce mode try a chroot and then run the installed fdisk!

  I'm still confused about how anaconda can possibly mount a partition
(two, including the boot partition) when fdisk thinks the partition
table is invalid.

-Alan

Otherwise you are somewhere I have not seen and can't really imagine,
so you need someone with more imagination to help.

Howard.

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