Really screwed up!

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Wise Acre
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Really screwed up!

Post by Wise Acre » 2018/01/29 15:23:37

It's been a long time since I've worked with linux/CentOS, and I decided to give it another try - I hate Windows 8.1, now.

I installed Centos 7 on my computer, but since I'm only a windows software tech, I made a few mistakes. First, I deleted the BIOS from my Lenovo Edge 15 laptop. I know: probie mistake. Second, I also installed Centos CORE and not the GUI. I don't know linux well enough to type in all of the commands in command line.

So here I sit trying to read articles on how to fix my mistakes, but there seems to be no one who's performed this kind of stupidity... except me.

Any of you gurus out there able to help me? Because I don't have BIOS I can't change the settings to read from my USB external CD/DVD writer to reinstall from the ISO.

Unless there's a simple way of adding the GUI (windows-like display) from the current installation, I'm a bit stuck. Any and all advice would be very welcome.

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TrevorH
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Re: Really screwed up!

Post by TrevorH » 2018/01/29 15:36:58

I deleted the BIOS from my Lenovo Edge 15 laptop
That's not something that is possible to do. If you are having trouble getting into the BIOS set up then you'd better contact Lenovo and ask them how to recover. The machine would be a brick without a functioning BIOS so you didn't "delete" it.
I also installed Centos CORE and not the GUI
All copies of CentOS 7 identify themselves as "CentOS Linux 7 (Core)". There is no difference between that and a GUI version except the packages that are installed. You probably just need to install some more packages. Start by using yum group install "GNOME Desktop" or yum group install "Server with GUI" depending on what you want to use it for. You can see all the possible groups that can be installed using yum group list
The future appears to be RHEL or Debian. I think I'm going Debian.
Info for USB installs on http://wiki.centos.org/HowTos/InstallFromUSBkey
CentOS 5 and 6 are deadest, do not use them.
Use the FAQ Luke

Wise Acre
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Re: Really screwed up!

Post by Wise Acre » 2018/01/29 16:08:45

Thanks Trevor for your reply, and thanks for not telling me what an idiot I am. ;) I tried both of those, and they give me the "There is no installed groups file..." then a bunch of garbledy goop about not being able to find any mirrors.

Any ideas?

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TrevorH
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Re: Really screwed up!

Post by TrevorH » 2018/01/29 16:12:57

bunch of garbledy goop about not being able to find any mirrors.
Post that so we can see the errors.
The future appears to be RHEL or Debian. I think I'm going Debian.
Info for USB installs on http://wiki.centos.org/HowTos/InstallFromUSBkey
CentOS 5 and 6 are deadest, do not use them.
Use the FAQ Luke

Wise Acre
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Re: Really screwed up!

Post by Wise Acre » 2018/01/29 16:41:44

Loaded plugins: fastestmirror
There is no installed groups file.
Maybe run: yum groups mark convert (see man yum)
Could not retrieve mirrorlist http://mirrorlist.centos.org/?release=7 ... nfra=stock error was
14: curl#6 - "Could not resolve host: mirrorlist.centos.org; unknown error"

One of the configured repositories failed (Unknown),
and yum doesn't have enough cached data to continue. At this point the only safe thing yum can do is fail. There are a few ways to work "fix" this:
1. Contact the upstream for the repositiory and get them to fix the problem.
2. Reconfigure the baseurl/etc. for the repository, to point to the working upstream. This is not often useful if you are using a newer distribution release than is supported by the repository (and the packages for the previous distribution release still work).
3.Run the command with the repository temporarily disabled
yum --disablerepo=<repoid> ...
4. Disable the repository permanently, so yum won't use it by default. Yum will then just ignore the repository until you permanently enable it again or use --enablerepo for temporary usage:
yum-config-manager --disable=<repoid>
or
subscription-manager repos --disable=<repoid>
5. Configure the failing repository to be skipped, if it is unavailable.
Note that yum will try to contact the repo. when it runs most commands, so will have to try and fail each time (and thus, yum will be much slower). If it is a very temporary problem though, this is often a nice compromise:
yum-config-manager --save --setopt=<repoid>.skip_if_unavailable=true

Cannot find a valid baseurl for repo: base/7/x86_64


There you have it. Is it telling me that I need to connect it to a LAN line for it to make internet contact?

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TrevorH
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Re: Really screwed up!

Post by TrevorH » 2018/01/29 17:18:14

14: curl#6 - "Could not resolve host: mirrorlist.centos.org; unknown error"
...
Is it telling me that I need to connect it to a LAN line for it to make internet contact?
Yes. Or if that's difficult you can mount the iso image on one of the directories mentioned in /etc/yum.repos.d/CentOS-Media.repo and use yum --disablerepo=\* --enablrepo=c7-media .... on your yum command to temporarily disable all repos and selectively enable the one that reads the DVD image.
The future appears to be RHEL or Debian. I think I'm going Debian.
Info for USB installs on http://wiki.centos.org/HowTos/InstallFromUSBkey
CentOS 5 and 6 are deadest, do not use them.
Use the FAQ Luke

Wise Acre
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Re: Really screwed up!

Post by Wise Acre » 2018/01/30 00:18:40

Is there a simple way of rebooting the computer from command line that would force the computer to simply read the ISO image on the external disk drive? Reinstall CentOS with all of the packages I need. I also have the CD's for CentOS 6.5 and could install that.

supertight
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Re: Really screwed up!

Post by supertight » 2018/01/30 02:33:14

Wise Acre wrote:Is there a simple way of rebooting the computer from command line that would force the computer to simply read the ISO image on the external disk drive? Reinstall CentOS with all of the packages I need. I also have the CD's for CentOS 6.5 and could install that.

You don't want to go backward into 6. If you can't supply a LAN connection, follow the instructions TrevorH has given you in the previous post. Your last easy day was yesterday. Welcome to Linux.

desertcat
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Re: Really screwed up!

Post by desertcat » 2018/01/30 15:15:54

supertight wrote:
Wise Acre wrote:Is there a simple way of rebooting the computer from command line that would force the computer to simply read the ISO image on the external disk drive? Reinstall CentOS with all of the packages I need. I also have the CD's for CentOS 6.5 and could install that.

You don't want to go backward into 6. If you can't supply a LAN connection, follow the instructions TrevorH has given you in the previous post. Your last easy day was yesterday. Welcome to Linux.
Ah I remember it well. First Welcome to Linux. We've ALL been there and done that. If everyone on these forums published some of their mistakes we'd have an overnight BOOK!!!

OK Since you can actually post to this forum you must have access to a computer. One thing you can do is burn yourself a copy of the CentOS-7-x86_64-DVD-1708.iso, and do a re-install from it. Just in case... you can find the mirrors list at https://www.centos.org/download/mirrors/. Find the place closest to you, download, check the sha256sum to make sure you downloaded the CLEAN copy, then burn baby burn (...disco inferno). The sha256sum for CentOS-7-x86_64-DVD-1708.iso is ec7500d4b006702af6af023b1f8f1b890b6c7ee54400bb98cef968b883cd6546.

This assumes that at bootup that POST will first check to see if you have a CD/DVD installed that it can read from. To get into BIOS tapping on F2 or Delete will *usually* gain you access. As TrevorH said it is impossible to delete BIOS. Running a simple fdisk -l will show you what is your boot partition. Again this *assumes* that the DEFAULT in BIOS checks to see if there something other the HDD. In the days of DOS, the first thing that was checked was to see if you had a Floppy Disk, later it was CD's and then DVD's, now it might be USB's, but there must be a DEFAULT device it reads from first. I have no idea if you have a built in CD/DVD, and if not then it has to be via USB. If you don't have a built it CD/DVD, it must have a USB port that it checks first. The difference is that you would burn the downloaded .iso to a USB using the dd command.

As an aside, since you are a Windows refusenik you might want to consider KDE over GNOME since it is more "Windows-like"... but more like Windows on steroids.

Again, WELCOME TO LINUX! I can guarantee you it will NOT be your last mistake!!! :lol:

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TrevorH
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Re: Really screwed up!

Post by TrevorH » 2018/01/30 16:27:27

If your BIOS won't let you boot from optical media at the moment then you cannot install from there. If you can create a USB stick containing the iso image using http://wiki.centos.org/HowTos/InstallFromUSBkey and your machine will let you boot from a USB stick then you could use that. Overall though, it would be easier to enable the network and run the yum commands I gave.
The future appears to be RHEL or Debian. I think I'm going Debian.
Info for USB installs on http://wiki.centos.org/HowTos/InstallFromUSBkey
CentOS 5 and 6 are deadest, do not use them.
Use the FAQ Luke

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