Problem installing LXDE Fedora 42 on an old laptop

Ask Fedora
1

I’m experimenting with xen using LXDE Fedora 42. I’ve gotten it working on a newer machine running second level under VirtualBox, but I’m having trouble installing it on an older laptop. I’ve created a installation DVD from the ISO image already used and that gets to the Install to Hard drive section, but after installation all I get is an “Operation [sic] system missing” message. The installation requires a biosboot 1M partition which is different from the successful installs. I successfully installed a Debian system earlier on this same laptop but had trouble getting XEN working. I don’t think I did anything with biosboot with the Debian install.

Any ideas?

2

It sounds to me like it’s expecting an EFI boot and not finding it because it’s installed as legacy bios boot.

3

OK, thanks. What do I need to do to make it work? I’ve tried deleting all the partitions but don’t know what I actually need to do. Is it something in the BIOS? Something in the Disk?

4

I got it to work using these steps:

  • Re-installing Debian
    • Debian had a /boot partition and an LVM partition
  • Re-installing Fedora (using the graphical partition control)
    • Kept the /boot partition. Changed the format from ext2 to ext4 and back to ext2 to remove a storage configuration error message.
    • Deleted the LVM partition(s). I don’t know why, but the configurator showed two of them.
    • Added a 16G / (root) partition (This had worked well on my newer system.)
    • Left the remainder (around 500G) unallocated, to be converted into an LVM later.
    • (The partition configurator never asked about a biosboot partition.)
  • Ran the install procedure

After it completed, a reboot brought up the graphical login screen. I can’t explain why this worked or why the normal install didn’t.

I still have more to do to make Fedora fully operational. At least now I have something I can work with.

5

The biosboot partition is needed when the partition table is gpt and the boot mode is classical legacy bios boot. The biosboot is used to store the rest of the grub2 loader as the master boot record is to small for that. With msdos (aka mbr) partition table there is usually a sizeable unused space before the first partition where the grub2 is installed.

Since quite a few years, the Fedora installer will always create a gpt partition table unless there is already a msdos partition table with an existing partition on the disk. For example, if you have a home partition you want to keep from a previous installation and the partition table is msdos, you don’t need a biosboot partition.

The gparted program calls this partition type “bios_grub”, if you want to use gparted to set up the disk partitioning.