Thinkpads Forum

Hi guys,

I turn to you all in need of great help. During my first foray into Fedora Core 5 when trying to update all the packages, after the long long long download it started installing...

then my screensaver (with lock) kicked in, I shake the mouse and the screensaver flickers but that's it... being a linux newbie I reboot.

Now, Fedora boots into the hardware checking stage, (even though I can't see it) and all I can see is a blank screen and the graphical cursor...

Can anyone help or should I wipe it? For some reason the install (ext2) is not mountable in Knoppix...whereas my Windows NTFS partition is....

Any ideas? Thank-you most kindly, in advance.

Just wipe it and call it a learning experience. Next time let it run until it finishes then the screen saver will exit properly or better yet disable the screensaver when doing major upgrades.
The same thing can happen in windows.

Ok, fair enough. I haven't had anything similiar happen to me using XP. However I think now I might wait it out for Fedora Core 6, as I've already encountered my fair share of problems with Fedora... just as I think I get everything almost working... this happens.

Thanks.

I've fixed computers where they were installing SP2 on XP and it went into the screen saver, they wiggled the mouse and it didn't wake up so they pulled the plug. It really trashes a system when you do that. Reinstall is the only option.
If they would have waited the screensaver would have released but they got nervous and cost themselves some money

My HDD has 5 partitions, I'm not sure which are for Linux and which are for Windows XP and Thinkpad Predesktop partition.

How can I get rid of the Linux partitions and merge it all back into NTFS?

A program like Partition Magic will tell you which partitions are what and let you delete and merge them.

Thanks, I think I'll go in through GTParted like last time.

That will work too. I didn't know if you were familiar with gparted.

*smiles* Neither did I, I used it to parition it in the first place using a Knoppix CD. That was my _actual_ first foray into Linux. I must say, it was pretty neat.

Thanks again, I appreciate it.

This might be a bit over the head for a beginner, but this is what you have to do to fix it:

First, you can't mount the ext2 because it first needs to be fsck'ed: Now you can mount it. Depending on which update you messed up by turning off the power, your might or might not be able to boot into the linux system. If you can't boot into it, boot from the install cd into rescue mode. Get a shell prompt (Try Ctrl-Alt-Fn).

Now you can try to verify the checksums for all installed files. This'll give you a hint where you interrupted the install before. You might find that your rpm database is corrupted, you can rebuild it by Once you know which package install went wrong, remove and reinstall

Thank-you, I'll try that out.

I decided to just wipe the lot with qtparted, so I deleted the partitions.

Yet now I can't boot through to Windows because grub is still in the way, and this time, it's command line...

Is this why there is /dev/hda and /dev/hdc it says that /dev/hdc is the partition table? So I'm thinking that's just the stroing of partition information and not where the bootloader is...

In /dev/hda there are still two small partitions that are "free" one is hidden and at the end of the disk? Is it one of these?

How can I merge paritions in qtparted?

Thanks.

The hidden one is probably the IBM restore partition, the small one at the end of the drive is always there for windows benefit.
You need to write the Thinkpad MBR. Try this: http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.ph ... hlight=mbr

the IBM_SERVICE parition, that's 5GB give or take. Isn't that the recovery partition? The other small ones are 8MB each, again give or take. One of them is hidden.

Will following those instructions and typing fdsk/mbr wipe my exisiting windows partition?

IBM_service is the restore partition. correct.
Those are not my instructions in the above link but JD usually knows what he is talking about.

Phew, setting my main partition as the "active" one using fdisk did the trick. Thanks very much, exploring Linux has made me learn even more about Windows, funnily enough.

Sorry you had a bad experience with linux.

Well thank-you for apologising but there's really no need, in my brief, maybe troubled time with Linux I saw potential. I'm hoping it gets there sooner rather than later.

I realise an operating system is a lot of work, but there needs to be a bit of spit and polish on there. It's a very nice environment to be in however, I'm hoping it can become my devloping environment. Here's to Fedora Core 6. Cheers.