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Install Fedora Core 6 w/external DVD drive

8 December, 2006 (13:58) | Computers | By: Jake

I’ve actually been trying to figure out how to do this for a while and not having much luck. Here’s my situation:

  • I have a computer that has a CD drive in it, but not a DVD drive.
  • I had previously downloaded the DVD version of Fedora Core 6 in to install it on a different machine.
  • I have an external USB DVD drive.
  • My BIOS does not support booting from a USB device
  • I wanted to avoid having to use up a lot of CD-R’s

So I went hunting in Google. I found pretty much nothing. After some investigation, I discovered that the Fedora Core 6 ISO has a file, images/boot.iso, that when burned to a CD provides a bootable media that can then read the external USB DVD. It’s really simple, but it took me quite some time to figure it out.

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Comments

Comment from Robin
Time December 12, 2006 at 5:40 am

I am having the same problem as you had! I burnt the boot.iso to cd but the setup still doesn’t detect the external usb dvd drive. What else did you have to do?
Cheers
Robin

Comment from <img src='http://jacob.steenhagen.us/blog/wp-content/plugins/rpx/images/openid.png'/> Jake
Time December 12, 2006 at 9:38 am

All I did was burn boot.iso, put that disk in the CD drive, attach the USB DVD drive and boot from CD. I don’t recall ever even telling the boot process where to find the DVD.

Comment from Aidan
Time December 22, 2006 at 8:22 pm

Dunno if this is going to help my problem but it looks relevant and helpful! Thanks!

Comment from Vitaliy
Time May 13, 2007 at 11:55 am

Jake, it don’t work.. I can’t find the solution too.. :(

Comment from Dave Whittaker
Time October 11, 2007 at 12:28 pm

I had a similar problem. While my BIOS does let me boot from the external DVD, anaconda still couldn’t seem to find the external drive once the installer started. If anyone has the same problem, disable any internal CD-ROM in your system BIOS then select CD-ROM as your package location once the installer starts. This time it will prompt you to select a driver and you just need to choose the USB mass storage option. Worked for me w/ FC7.

Comment from hdixon
Time January 19, 2008 at 3:55 pm

dude – thx – this worked for me. Been spending 2 days googling till I’m sick of the word google.
Older Compaq DL380 G2 and FC8. Installing now.

Comment from FozzTexx
Time February 9, 2008 at 2:25 pm

I’ve had the same problem as well. You boot the external USB device, and then the Fedora installer keeps asking where it can find the disk to install from. Had the same problem both with the FC8 and FC7 installer. When I hit alt-F4 to look at another console with diagnostics, I could see it would attach the external USB DVD drive as sr0. But, it seems it was taking its time doing that. I found that if I rebooted, then before telling it my language and keyboard I went to the alt-F4 console and *waited* for it to attach sr0 then went back to alt-F1, it would see the DVD no problem.

Comment from Pete Jones
Time March 24, 2008 at 4:27 pm

Thanks for this. Saved me some time.

Comment from john
Time April 3, 2008 at 12:06 am

i haven’t tried yet. but i have same problem.thanks.

Comment from DNR
Time May 12, 2008 at 8:11 pm

I’ve been hunting up a solution to this problem for a while now! I’m glad you blogged your solution to the problem. Thanks Jake!

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