Very Computer

Here is another RH install-related question.

1. I have two 'older' PC's (Pen 133's) ('95-'96).

2. I can install RH 7.0 without a single hickup -- all works just fine.

3. I cannot install RH 7.1 as a 'clean' install on either of them.

4. The systems always hang while installing the package's I've selected from
the CD.

5. I have three different sets of CD's for RH 7.1 -- two from RH and 1 from
a book.

6. The results are the same with any set on either machine.

7. Using the same CD's I can 'upgrade' one PC from 7.0 to 7.1,

    running in 'update' mode.

8. But I cannot 'update' the other PC.

9. Redhat support told me to upgrade my CD-ROM drive.

10. I have tried several (IDE and SCSI) in those machines -- always with the
same result.

11. I have two newer machines on which RH 7.1 works like a charm.

Thanks again.

James

Quote:> 4. The systems always hang while installing the package's I've selected from
> the CD.

I had a similar problem. FWIW my machine dates from 1998. I have reason
to believe my CD ROM is flakey -- audio CD's skip when played in that
drive even though others play them fine. But the long & the short of it
is that the RH 7.1 installation failed when I got to the packages part.

What I eventually did -- I copied the CD images to the disk.
(df /dev/cdrom; to get the exact size, then dd if=/dev/cdrom of=cd.img
bs=1024 count=XXXXXX; to make the image.) Then I created a loopback
filesystem for each image: losetup /dev/loop0 cd.img; mkdir /mnt/loop0;
mount -o ro /dev/loop0 /mnt/loop0; and repeat for each CD image.
(I only worked w/ the first & second CD's -- I'll deal w/ Powertools later.)

Then I could cd /mnt/loop0/RedHat/RPMS; and snoop around to see what
packages are there. I found a list of packages by category somewhere
on the first CD, and I thought about excluding packages that I don't
really need, but in the end it was easiest to install everything:
rpm -Uh /mnt/loop*/RedHat/RPMS/*.rpm --test; and then after removing
a couple of conflicting packages (stuff which I had installed by
hand, not in RH 7.1) I ran rpm without --test.

Then after massive thrashing, the install was done! At that point I
shut down the machine & went to sleep. DON'T DO THAT! You need to
run LILO to point at the new kernel; edit lilo.conf as appropriate
before running LILO. If you don't run LILO, your machine won't boot
on next power-up, as I noticed the next morning. :^)

It is supposedly possible to make the RH 7.1 installer read the
CD images off the disk, but the installer kept telling me that it
couldn't find the images. I gave up on that.

By the way, assuming you eventually do get RH 7.1 installed, please
note that KDE 2.1 is a terrible memory pig. Gnome is somewhat less
burdensome. On an slow, small machine, try logging in with the
"failsafe" session, and then execute "twm" in the xterm you get.
No bells, no whistles -- almost nothing, really. As it should be. :^)

Also, by default all kinds of services are started such as httpd, sshd,
Japanese character input, etc etc ad infinitum. You'll want to
disable some of those.

HTH,
Robert Dodier
--
"He wins most who toys with the dies." -- Jeannie Biesiada