Installing Fedora 8 (Werewolf) on a ThinkPad X61 Tablet
X61 Tablet
Keywords
X61 Tablet
USB Flash Drive Boot
Fedora 8 Werewolf
AHCI Enabled Install
No DVD media
Installing Fedora 8 on a X61 tablet PC.
The X61 Tablet(X61t) installs rather "easily" with some straightforward effort. I had originally tried Fedora 7, but gave up in favor of the latest new release of Fedora 8. I did not have access to DVD a burner so I used a USB HDD and flash key for the install.
Getting install images
You will needs a seperate running install to get ready for the install. First get the DVD and rescue images via bittorrent from Fedora torrent.
Preparing flash drive
The key will hold a boot image and rescue image. If key is large enough you can put DVD image on it also without external HDD. Wipe the MBR of the usb key via the following command. (I'm assuming your key is /dev/sdc)
This takes forever so you may want to skip this step, I waited.
# dd if:eq/dev/zero of&eq/dev/sdc bs&eq512 count&eq1
Use ms-sys if you don't have it try yum install ms-sys. Otherwise go the project's homepage and install it.
# ms-sys --fat32 /dev/sdX
Find you current OSes mbr.bin to setup the master boot record of the USB key.
# locate mbr.bin
# /usr/lib/syslinux/mbr.bin > /dev/sdc
Use fdisk or parted to make sure you've removed all preexisting partitions from the usb key try.
# /sbin/fdisk /dev/sdc
Use options:
FOR fdisk
N new partition
P primary 1
1 start sector
128 end sector ~
Now make a single partition (primary #1) on the key of type FAT 32 via:
#
mkfs.vfat -F 32 /dev/sdc1
#
mkfs.vfat -F 32 /dev/sdc2
Now make sure via parted or fdisk to set this new partition as boot-able in fdisk this is the "a" option for partition 1. dd the bootdisk.img from the DVD to /dev/sdc1
# mount -o loop Fedora-8-i386-DVD.iso /media/cdrecorder
# dd if /media/cdrecorder/images/diskboot.img of /dev/sdc1
Copy rescue ISO onto second USB partition just in case.
# mount /dev/sdc2 /media/usbdisk/
# sync; umount /dev/usbdisk
Unmount everything. Try using the USB key to boot the X61 Tablet. Remember to plug in the USB HDD containing the DVD iso file. Also put the ISO in the HDD / path for ease of use.
