Fedora Installation

[Jose R. Rodriguez]

Although I own an IBM T40, not a T42, the following bit of information 
may be of help when you install any Fedora.

There is a hidden recovery partition at the end of the original hard 
drive, some 3.5 - 5 Gigz.  You can verify its existence with a "live" 
Linux implementation (I used an evaluation copy of Sun Microsystems' 
Java Desktop --a current version of Knopix might do the job also --I did 
not test it).  The most straight forward manner is the "cfdisk" command 
to show all the existing partitions in your system once your live Linux 
has booted into its ephemeral existence.

If your WinXPP is relatively untouched (i.e., you just bought your 
machine), you will have an easier time reformatting your hard drive 
rather than attempting to resize the huge NTFS partition.  The reformat 
operation has to be done FROM WITHIN the "PreDesktop" utility 
(accessible by pressing  the "Access IBM" button when your computer 
boots up) so as to avoid erasing the (already verified) hidden recovery 
partition at the end of your hard drive. 

I used my LVM based OS/2 Boot Manager to create a small 7 - 10 Gigs 
partition at the beginning of my 40 Gig hard drive but I assume that 
Partition Magic 5 and up may also be used.  Please note that I attempted 
to resize, initially, the original 35 Gigs NTFS partition with Partition 
Magic 5 and it did not work; it complained of an error in the 
partition.  Nevertheless, IBM offsets the beginning of their huge T 
series hard drives in order to make them available to the BIOS --and 
there the reason, apparently, that older (but cheap :) partitioning 
utilities can not resize those huge drives.

Continuing where I left off, you can go to the "PreDesktop" utility and 
then select the recovery of your WinXPP  option.  It will only take the 
initial partition (whatever size you decided to leave for the M$ system 
but it should be at least 7 Gigz for the base system + the huge pagefile 
that is created within); the rest of the free space is left for you to 
do whatever you wish (with care).  It should take about 1.5 - 2 hours 
for the whole WinXPP recovery process to finish.  Since you are planning 
to dual boot, you may use your recovered M$ os to make a Linux partition 
as well.

Please be aware that the partitioning scheme by Linux is quite different 
from the one used by M$.  In order to avoid corruption between so 
different partitioning implementations, you may want to add a small 
unformatted "padding" of, say 3- 5 Megs, between your M$ partitions and 
your Linux ones.  That way, you will decrease the chance of corrupting 
your partitions by either os trespassing the other's boundaries.

Another "thing" that you should keep in mind when installing Fedora, 
regardless of how you approach the problem, is to specify the "Force 
LBA32" option when you are to choose either Lilo or Grub to bootstrap 
your system.  Not doing so may introduce booting problems even for the 
initial WinXPP partition.

Finally, please be forewarned, every situation requires careful analysis 
of the feedback returned by the machine.  Before claiming success I 
corrupted a Fat32 partition that I had, reinstalled WinXPP and Fedora on 
several occasions as well as my OS/2 Boot Manager.  Unless you are 
planning to install Fedora at the beginning of your drive, remember to 
specify the "Force LBA32" option when you are to choose your bootstrap 
program.  The general suggestion described above worked for me when I 
decided to add Fedora to my OS collection in my T40.  I manage the 4 
operating systems residing in there with Wseb's LVM Boot Manager, 
located after my 7 Gigz WinXPP partition. 

Regards.

Weston Monroe wrote:

> I am considering installing Fedora on my IBM ThinkPad T42p. I would 
> want to do a duel boot with Windows. My HD is formatted using the NTFS 
> and I read that Linux needs FAT. Will Fedora automatically partition 
> and convert the necessary space to FAT. Also, should I install core 2 
> or 3? Thanks so much. I am really new to linux
>
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