Re: installation problems
From: Allan Adler (ara_at_nestle.csail.mit.edu)
Date: 08/17/05
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Date: 16 Aug 2005 22:34:02 -0400
Since my last posting on this topic, I've continued along the lines I
described last time, which were:
>I replaced the CD-R/RW with the original Samsung and tried again to install
>RH 7 (i.e. to restore the machine to its original condition before installing
>RH 9 trashed the Linux partitions and made the machine unbootable). It
>couldn't boot from the CDROM but seemed to get further, something about a
>2.88 floppy, and when it finally gave up it told me to insert the boot floppy,
>which I did. I attempted to install in text and selected the Gnome desktop,
>but got an error message to the effect that
>/mnt/source/RedHat/RPMS/desktop-backgrounds-1.1-4.noarch.rpm
>couldn't be opened due to missing file, bad package or bad media.
I tried a few more times to install in text, since that seems to be the
most promising idea so far. I selected manual install and tried to avoid Gnome.
Then I chose fdisk to look at the partitions. I had to select mount points
for them, which I did. The / partition only had about 51MB and RH complained
about that. The /usr partition had about 2.3GB. Swap had about 192MB. I'm
not sure but I think that the earlier attempts to install, letting RH follow
its own lead, might have caused the former root partition and the former
swap partition to switch their roles, resulting in a root partition that
was too small. Anyway, all I did was select mount points and then proceeded,
with the installation. I went through all the packages individually and
selected the ones whose names had a nice ring to them. Occasionally, I hit
F2 to find out what they did, but that seemed to be too much work for all of
them. When I got to the end, I let it try to install what I had selected.
This time, I got no error message about not being able to open something.
Of course, I haven't mentioned error messages about some packages requiring
other packages, which were easy to deal with. What I got this time was
an error message about there not being enough space in the partition, about
23 MB too short, and not enough nodes. It then ran through the attempted
install again and again until I shut off the PC. There wasn't any way to
just go back and tell it, "Well, just leave that package out", the way
I can do at the supermarket when I don't have enough money for all the
groceries.
This evening, I tried again. This time, I deleted all of the Linux partitions,
including the swap partition, and then reallocated them, gave the / and /usr
partitions their mount points and then proceeded item by item through the
manual installation. I decided that I owe it to myself to actually hit F2
everytime I have to select one, even if it doesn't look very interesting.
One reason I haven't bothered, apart from the expenditure of energy, is the
perception that the energy is wasted, since I'll simply forget it all
immediately after the install. But that perception is wrong: if I have
to try half a million times to install RH 7, and if I hit the F2 key
for each package each time in order to decide about it, I think I am
going to develop a lot of passive knowledge about all of the packages
comprising RH 7. So, this infernal installation program has some educational
potential. I'm not sure where I would read the same information without
going through the installation, probably in the documentation for RH 7,
but this is pretty vivid. Next time I try, I'll write down all of the
packages and their contents and what choices I made and what the error
messages were, so that I can think about the implications of these choices
after I shut off the computer.
I tried to be consistent about avoiding anything that involved Gnome or KDE,
but I still got an error message like the above, but the missing file, bad
package or bad medium arises in connection with the file
/mnt/source/RedHat/RPMS/gal-0.4.1-3.i386.rpm
Again, there is no way to just tell it, "Well, just forget about that one
and proceed". Instead, it asks whether you want to try again to install that
one, and you go around that loop infinitely.
Is there any way to tell whether the CD's are damaged?
I could also, in principle, carry out the same exercises with RH 9 or Fedora 2,
but they aren't available to me any more, and the short window of opportunity
for trying to install them was one of the reasons I didn't spend time
researching the hardware they needed.
If all the installation package is doing is selecting rpm files to install,
maybe all I have to do is install rpm by hand, via sneakernet, and use it.
These rpm files must be somewhere on the net, even if they aren't on my
CDs. If only they are available individually...
-- Ignorantly, Allan Adler <ara@zurich.csail.mit.edu> * Disclaimer: I am a guest and *not* a member of the MIT CSAIL. My actions and * comments do not reflect in any way on MIT. Also, I am nowhere near Boston.
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