ThePistonDoctor

Well, I'm not off to a good start on my first carPC...lol

I just fired up my D945GCLF2 for the first time, just using a regular ATX power supply and have it hooked to the board with a VGA monitor on my desk (I'll test the DC-DC PSU later on)

I wanted to get everything set up then test the PSU then install it.

Anyway, I downloaded the fedora live CD iso from www.fedoraproject.org, and used the Fedora LiveUSB creator to put the iso file on a formatted 8 gig USB stick. I first tried the i686 version and then the x86_64 and neither one works. I set the bios to boot USB devices first, then restarted and it will show the initial Intel splash screen (where you would press F2 for setup) but then it just goes to a black screen that says "boot error".

There are some other weird things going on too. Since I'm just using the ATX power supply, I don't have a way to turn the power on and off other than flipping the switch on the power supply. I didn't think that this should be causing any problems, but whenever I turn it off, I have to pull the cmos battery and put it back in before the computer will start again (i.e. the fan doesn't even turn on until I pull and reinstall the cmos battery). Then when I turn it back on, it gives three errors: that there was a cmos battery failure, then hit enter and that there was a cmos checksum error, and one other which I don't remember at the moment but it wasn't significant. After I enter through those three messages, if the USB drive is in I get the boot error message, otherwise I get a request to insert a bootable device. I don't have a CD rom so I need to do this via USB.

All I'm trying to do is install Fedora 10 from this (supposedly) bootable USB stick but I can't get anywhere. All that's hooked up is the motherboard, 2 gigs of ram, power supply, ps2 mouse and keyboard, and sata2 hard drive. All the components are brand new and I know they are all correct for each other.

Any ideas?

Thanks!

MP3Car.com

 

unsungboxer

I am using almost the exact setup except I am running ubuntu 8.10 (soon to be 9.04). If you followed the proper steps in making the bootable USB then you are problably fine there. You need to enable USB booting in the bios. I think you press f2 when starting up to go to the settings, then in the boot section, enable USB boot. At that point it should look at your USB ports for a bootable drive. I use an 8gb san cruzer drive that has not had any problems.

Good luck w/ your setup. I am currently having some troubles w/ mine, but you can AIM me if you have any questions: UnsungBoxer

ThePistonDoctor

USB booting is enabled in the BIOS, I have a couple other things to try today so I'll post back if I can get it working.

strikeback03

Have you tried booting any other systems to make sure the install worked properly? I have a USB stick with Ubuntu 9.04 installed (after the fiasco that was the 8.10 launch I now test each new release off USB before actually installing), I could see if my LF2 board boots that.

ThePistonDoctor

Ok, so I redid the image just to be sure it was correct, booted up on my Toshiba laptop w/ no problem, then changed the BIOS on my carpc to recognize the USB stick as a hard drive, and it booted up w/ no problem. I then installed it onto my local hard drive,shut down, unplugged the USB stick, rebooted into the BIOS to set it to boot first from the HDD and set it like you normally would. It gets past the loading initrd.img parta nd then reezes saying either a) Kernel Panic - Not Syncing, attempted to kill init or b) a bunch of random jibberish crap.

Any ideas now? It will boot fine from the USB stick but not on the local HDD. I just followed the defaults for installing it, didn't try any funny business so it should be fine.

unsungboxer

so I understand you got it booted and installed from the USB and onto the HD. At this point it just wont boot from the HD correct? Are you using SATA HD.

Another thing I wanted to mention that another member found with Fedora, if you are planning on using a lilliput touchscreen it requires the egalax drivers, which relies on Xorg server. AFIK fedora doesnt use Xorg so you might run into troubles. Have you considered using Ubuntu?

ThePistonDoctor

1. Yes you're right, it just won't boot from the HD. It boots fine from the USB stick, and yes it is a SATA2 HDD (Fujitsu 320GB/7200rpm)

2. I am using a Xenarc touchscreen and the screen came with a CD that has drivers for Fedora, so that's not a problem

Edit: BTW the CMOS battery thing was because of a power setting in the BIOS. I was set to stay off after a power failure so I changed it to "last state" and now I can flip the power supply on/off at will.

unsungboxer

do you have another pc? you could pull the sata drive out of your car pc, connect it to your desktop and see if it will boot there. you may want to try reinstalling fedora. perhaps something didnt get transfered over right which is always a risk with usb installations. if you can hook it to a desktop try installing the os from cd

MP3Car.com

 

ThePistonDoctor

that could work. Luckily I'm a network administrator, so currently I'm at work and surrounded by computers...lol - I'll try booting it up from one of these and post back with the results.

tdb30_

Is it possible the boot partition didn't get written? Maybe this page will help: http://slashhome.wordpress.com/2007/...b-boot-loader/

__________________
My carputer project

ThePistonDoctor

yep that's exactly what happened. It wouldn't boot from any other PCs either so I reinstalled it on the HDD from the USB stick and it works fine now. I'm up and running but it's still a little buggy, I suspect because I don't have any way to kill the power except flipping off the power supply. It's not getting the startup signal to tell it to turn on and off so the POST and BIOS are a little wacky.

Anyway, tomorrow I am going to try to get the dc-dc psu up and running and go from there.

Anyway, once it's starting up / stopping reliably...then what? Just stick it in my car and go to town? It took like 5 min to install Fedora lol

Or perhaps there are some things I should download first...what would you all say is the next step?

MP3Car.com