Fedora 17 Installation

Obtaining Media

There are multiple ways of installing Fedora. You can simply go to the main Fedora website, http://fedoraproject.org, click the Download link in the main menu. The main download option will provide you with the full ISO image of the 64 bit, live Gnome desktop. Please note that the 64 bit version may not be suitable for older PC’s. There are other downloads available. If you scroll down that page and look to the right, there are two links of interest to take note of.

All download methods

This provides you with links to a multitude of download options. You can download the media directly, use BitTorrent, or Metalinks.

Media choices include DVD install (also for upgrading from previous versions for Fedora), Live CDs of Gnome and KDE, and network install CDs (requires Internet connection)
Fedora Spins

Spins are Fedora live CDs that contain a different software. The KDE spin uses the KDE desktop instead of Gnome. The XFCE spin uses the lightweight, yet GTK aware XFCE desktop. The Games spin focuses on games, both 2D and 3D.

While spins contain different sets of software, they all contain software that is available in the Fedora software repositories online. You can easily install all the games you want from the KDE spin, or install the XFCE desktop from the main Desktop CD.
Installation

I would highly recommend using one of the Live CD's as installation media for a couple of reasons. First, you can take Fedora (or the specific desktop environment) for a test drive before you choose to install. Secondly, and most importantly, if you run into trouble later, you'll have a disk that boots into a live environment so you can fix any problems that may arise.

After you’ve downloaded and burned your ISO image to disk, it’s time to get started! Insert the disk in your optical drive, boot up from the media.

Before continuing, see the end of this page for any installation caveats that may cause problems.

Step 1 - Boot Options

The first screen you’re greeted with is the GRUB bootloader screen. The basic options provided are to start Fedora, or go a troubleshooting section with other options including “Test this media & start Fedora 17.” This is my preferred choice, particularly when using a CD/DVD for the first time.

Note that pressing “Tab” will provide you a full kernel configuration screen, should you need to pass custom parameters.

This will take a bit of time to boot, depending on the speed of your hardware.

Step 2 - Start the Installer

Here, the Fedora desktop is presented to you. The “Install to Hard Drive” application can be in one of a few different spots, depending on the spin you’ve chosen to install from. The main Gnome spin has it in the quick lauch bar. KDE and XFCE have it on the desktop.

Open the Install to Hard Drive app, and the Anaconda installer will start.

Step 3 - Keyboard Layout

The first screen asks you for your keyboard layout.

Step 4 - Storage devices

This screen asks you what kind of storage devices you’re using. Unless you have something custom, and likely expensive, the Basic Storage Devices option should suffice. An ordinary PC or laptop will fall into this category. Your hard drives will be analyzed after clicking Next.

Step 5 - Hostname

Here you can set your hostname. While default will work just fine, be encouraged to change the hostname to your liking.

Step 6 - Time Zone

Change the time to where you live. The important setting here is whether your system clock is set to UTC. Left unchecked, and it tells Fedora your system clock is set to local time.

Step 7 - Set root password

Set the password for the root user.

Step 8 - Partitioning

This section is highly subjective, and the configuration will be different depending on your specific needs and preferences.

If you’re just taking Fedora for a test drive, I would recommend the “Use All Space option, and uncheck Use LVM. This would be the most simplistic layout.

Step 9 - Choose Boot Loader Location

Unless your layout is custom, the default should be just fine. Clicking next here will begin the installation. Grab yourself a cup of coffee, and check back later.

Step 10 - Reboot

You’ll now be asked to reboot your system. Depending on your configuration, you may need to remove the installation media.

Step 11 - Welcome

Nothing to configure here. Just click next.

Step 12 - License Information

This just explains where you can find the license information regarding Fedora, which contains 100% free and open source software. No proprietary or closed source software binaries reside in this distribution. In case you want to read over the licenses, you can go here http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Legal/Licenses/LicenseAgreement

Step 13 - Create a User Account

Enter your full name, login name, and password. You may opt to add yourself to the Administrators group for convenience. Network Login is for configuring NIS and other forms of managed user authentication. This can be safely ignored unless you know for sure otherwise.

Advanced will open the user manager, and allow you to create more than one user, as well as provide detailed configuration options for your user account. This can generally be ignored.

Step 14 - Date and Time

Here you can configure your system clock to synchronize over the network or Internet. If you have an ‘always-on’ Internet connection, or a NTP time server configured on your network, I recommend turning this on.

Step 15 - Hardware Profile

This area asks you whether or not to send Fedora developers a detail of your computer hardware. By doing so, you provide developers insight as to what hardware to maintain. You can certainly feel free to not send any info at all.

Step 16 - Login

Now you can login to Fedora, and enjoy your Linux experience!

Gotcha’s

Below is a list of problems you may or may not run into, and a way to correct the problems.

Installing on a Disk Drive Used for Windows 7 (And probably Vista)

I used a hard drive that was used in a Windows 7 RAID 1 array. During Fedora installation, I deleted the partitions and recreated my own structure.

Note, I’m not sure if it was the fact that the disk was used in a Windows RAID array, or the fact that it was formatted by Windows 7. Either way, the below solution worked perfectly.

The Problem

GRUB bootloader failed to install.

The Solution

I zeroed out the entire hard drive with a very simple (and very destructive) command while booted up from the Live CD. I could have simply zeroed out the MBR, and next several blocks.

But, I chose the radical solution instead.

You must know what you’re doing with this command, specifically, which hard drive you need to zero out. This command will cause irreparable data loss. Which is exactly what I needed, targeted at the correct hard drive.

Before using the dd command, you should know what hard drive you need to zero out, ie /dev/sda, /dev/sdb, etc. You should be able to figure this out from the partitioner in Step 8.

dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sda bs=512 count=1

For reference, the dd command is an abbreviation for data definition. However, it’s best to think of it as ‘data destroyer’ every time you invoke that command! Triple check it before pressing Enter. Just my two cents.

As a side note, if you want to wipe out an entire disk, use the following command (targeted at the correct disk, of course!)

dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sda