Got a new PC, so I decided to install fedora 13 on it.
First my hard disk, which I prepared on another linux box, was not recognized.
Got a "Dropping to shell. sh: Can't access tty; job control turned off" error.
Tried booting with acpi=off irqpoll, Tried removing disks in fstab. Tried changing the bios to boot hard disk first.
This was a grub problem, So I upgraded to grub2.
To install grub2, yum install grub2 on another linux box.
This does not replace grub bootloader on that box, but gives you the ability to install grub2 to any mounted hard drive.
You must use the chroot method:
1) Boot your other Linux box from say /dev/sda
2) Open a terminal - Applications, Accessories, Terminal.
3) Mount your normal system partition:
mount /dev/sdb1 /mnt/boot
4) Mount the critical virtual filesystems:
mount --bind /dev /mnt/boot/dev
mount --bind /proc /mnt/boot/proc
mount --bind /sys /mnt/boot/sys
5) Chroot into your normal system device:
chroot /mnt/boot
6) If there is no /boot/grub2/grub.cfg or it's not correct, create one.
7) Reinstall GRUB 2:
grub2-install /dev/sdb
do not use: --root-directory=/mnt/boot or --boot-directory=/mnt/boot as the chroot already tells it it's root,
8) Verify the install (use the correct device, for example sda. Do not specify a partition):
grub2-install --recheck /dev/sdb
9)Exit chroot: CTRL-D on keyboard
10) Unmount virtual filesystems:
umount /mnt/boot/dev
umount /mnt/boot/proc
umount /mnt/boot/sys
11) Restore hard disk to new box and boot.
So now that I can boot from grub2, the hardware still was too new to recognize the hard disk (i3 with Gigabyte SATA chipset).
First I downloaded "Fedora-13-i386-DVD.iso" and mounted it:
mount -o loop -t iso9660 /DOS/Fedora-13-i386-DVD.iso /mnt/DVD
Copied install.img from its images directory to outside the iso.
Copied isolinux/vmlinuz and isolinux/initrd.img to /boot/
Renamed them to vmlinuz-install and initrd.img-install.
Edit the grub.cfg to default to:
title Fedora install
Root (hd0,0)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-install ro root=LABEL=/ rhgb quiet
initrd /boot/initrd.img-install
This is how I did it in fc11. But lo, it does not recognize the disk. So set up the second box with http pointing to /mnt/DVD where I have my images and the rest of the opened ISO tree. Now install using URL to the second box.
Now edit the grub.cfg to default to:
title Fedora install
Root (hd0,0)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.33.1-14.fc13.i686.PAE ro root=LABEL=/ verbose i915.modeset=0
initramfs /boot/initrd-2.6.33.1-14.fc13.i686.PAE.img
You must not install from a text screen. All options reformat your hard disk!
See the issues I had upgrading from fc8 to fc11.