[clug] Fedora on EFI only Xserve

[Chris Smart]

2009/7/3 Steve Walsh <steve at nerdvana.org.au>:
> ok, I'm getting a little confused as to what you're trying to do...Ananconda
> is the installer, but you're talking about grub and kernel boot
> options...have you tried enabling the VNC options for anaconda?
>

OK, here goes :-)

I'm installing Fedora 11 on an Apple Xserve server which has no BIOS
but only EFI. Therefore traditional optical installation media does
not work. Fedora 11 has an EFI bootloader on it but for some reason
the server cannot boot it either.

So I downloaded the efidisk.img installer image (designed for EFI
systems) and wrote it to USB stick with 'dd'. It does not use ISOLINUX
to boot, it uses GRUB.

The server detects this and will boot from it. It loads the GRUB
screen which has an entry for the kernel and initramfs.

When I boot the defaults I can see the kernel start to load and then
the video signal disappears.

No matter what kernel options I pass, the same thing happens - I lose
the signal on boot. I can't find any way to see the screen. The 'text'
option may well be starting the text only install, but I can't see
cause the signal disappears.

> Are you installing F11, or are you done and trying to boot the machine?

Trying to install it.

>
> Btw, "text" passed to anaconda will never start X, it launches a ncurses
> based installer.
>

Yep, that doesn't do anything. I wonder whether the efisdisk.img
installer actually works with those options.. maybe it doesn't. Or
maybe it does and some other problem is causing the signal to
disappear..

-c