If you are upgrading your Fedora distribution, you don't even need to create a new partition (you can put the installation files in your home directory and start the process and then delete them afterwards).
If you want to do a fresh install, you really need a second partition that contains the installation files. Big chance you already have such partition, but it has to be formatted as one of the following filesystems:
- FAT16
- FAT32
- Linux ext2fs
- ReiserFS
- JFS
- XFS
Type:
Quote:
fdisk -l
To find out which partition qualify to this requirement.
In short you need:
- A working Linux distro (right now) (Doing it through Windows is a lot harder)
- A Fedora installation source (the DVD-iso or the CD-ROM iso's)
- Around 3 gig of free space
- A text editor (mousepad, gedit, kate, vi)
- And maybe a partition creater/deleter (gparted or qtparted (these can be installed with yum))
- GRUB installed and working
Grab a 'source' (I use the Fedora 7 DVD image in this tutorial). You can get Fedora installation images here:
http://fedoraproject.org/get-fedora.html
You will end up with (a) file(s) that end with .iso . Now we need to extract isolinux from them, because grub does not understand the iso9660 filesystem. You do this by mounting the DVD-image (or the first CD-image):
Quote:
mkdir /mnt/isoimage
mount -t iso9660 /path/to/image/image.iso /mnt/isoimage/ -o loop
cd /mnt/isoimage
There you will find some files including the following directory:
Quote:
isolinux
Copty this directory to the second partition if you want to do a fresh install or to your home directory if you want to upgrade.
Quote:
cp -R isolinux /path/to/installation/storage/
I have my secondary partition located at /mnt/sdb2. The partition is called:
/dev/sdb2
So I do:
Quote:
cp -R isolinux /mnt/sdb2
Now umount and move the image:
Quote:
umount /mnt/isoimage/
rm -rf /mnt/isoimage/
cp /path/to/image/image.iso /path/to/installation/storage/
Your installation storage should now contain:
- The isolinux directory
- The Fedora dvd image OR the fedora cd images
Final step is to add it to grub. You have to boot the installation from grub . My grub looks like this:
Quote:
default=0
timeout=5
splashimage=(hd0,2)/boot/grub/splash.xpm.gz
hiddenmenu
title Fedora (2.6.22.1-41.fc7)
root (hd0,2)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.22.1-41.fc7 ro root=/dev/sda3 rhgb quiet
initrd /boot/initrd-2.6.22.1-41.fc7.img
title Fedora Install
root (hd1,1)
kernel /isolinux/vmlinuz root=/dev/sdb2
initrd /isolinux/initrd.img
I added (and nothing more is required to add):
Quote:
title Fedora Install
root (hd1,1)
kernel /isolinux/vmlinuz root=/dev/sdb2
initrd /isolinux/initrd.img
You need to modify the root parameterS You can find the correct root values by typing (those rootparameters must both point to the same partition):
Quote:
fdisk -l
My output looks like (I deleted some stuff to make it easier) (the root(
root=
/dev/sda1--------------------------------hd0,0
/dev/sda2--------------------------------hd0,1
/dev/sda3--------------------------------hd0,2
/dev/sda4--------------------------------hd0,3
/dev/sda5--------------------------------hd0,4
/dev/sdb1--------------------------------hd1,0
/dev/sdb2--------------------------------hd1,1
/dev/sdb3--------------------------------hd1,2
Well, I used /dev/sdb2. This is the second partition of the second disk:
root (hd1,1)
And the kernelparameter (root=/dev/sdb2)
If you want to upgrade and the installation files are in your home directory you use:
Quote:
title Fedora Install
root (hd0,2) # this is my Fedora partition
kernel /home/Ronald/isolinux/vmlinuz root=/dev/sda3 # this is the same Fedora partition
initrd /home/Ronald/isolinux/initrd.img
Now reboot and select:
Quote:
Fedora Install
1: Skip MediaCheck
2: Select your language
3: Select your keyboard lay-out
4: Locate where the images are
Disk: /dev/sdb2
Location: / # This is if I placed the iso image(s) in the mount directory
Or, if you placed it in your homedir:
Location: /home/Ronald/
Press OK
The installation now starts