First-time install troubles

[Scott Talbot]

On Thu, 2004-02-26 at 16:31, Fran Fabrizio wrote:

<snip>
> 
> - The auto-partition makes an /dev/sda3 for /boot, and then a logical 
> partition containing a /dev/sda5 for / and then the swap space.  It then 
> warns me that this might not be good for my boot loader, and a boot disk 
> is strongly recommended.

	This message is meant for owners of older machines, whose BIOS won't
boot from a partition above cylinder 1024 - should not affect you at
all.

>             What's the problem here?  I chose to install 
> GRUB on the MBR, more or less accepted all defaults.
> 
> - When I then install, and get to the boot disk part, it tells me it 
> can't make a boot disk because it won't fit on a floppy.
> 
	Yes I've seen that before.  The new kernel's with SATA support and the
newer functions can't be made to fit into a 1.44M floppy.  There is a CD
BootImage on disk 1  Install that you could use though. 

> - When I reboot, it goes straight into Windows, no GRUB.
 	Now this is the real problem.  Looks to me like GRUB did 
not install to your MBR.  Possibly the error creating your boot 
floppy bypassed the grub-install?  Try re-booting the first fedora 
disk and entering 'linux-rescue' at the prompt, chroot into your HD and running 
'grub-install /dev/sda' (without quotes).


HTH

Scott
> How can I get Fedora to successfully install the boot loader?
> 
> Thanks,
> Fran
> 
> -- 
> 
> Fran Fabrizio
> Senior Systems Analyst
> Department of Computer and Information Sciences
> University of Alabama - Birmingham
> fran at cis.uab.edu
> (205) 934-0653
>