install strangeness

[Simon White]

06-May-02 at 20:12, William Carty (admin@thinktankdecoy.com) wrote :
> I had similar problems with the installer.  I downloaded the 2.2 ISO &
> thought perhaps something got screwed up when I burned the CD, but it
> sounds like you're having the same problems with an official copy.
> Maybe the installer is buggy - maybe it's a well documented problem.
> Can't say I've researched it as the base install worked okay (was the
> *only* option that worked at all) & then I went back and installed the
> packages I needed.  Everyone was happy in the end.

I have had enormous problems with the installer also. I think it is
fundamentally flawed somewhere. Error messages are hopeless and I have had
yi crash (The Yellowdog install process) without telling me anything
useful at all.

Such a shame, it seems they have launched YDL2.2 without fully testing the
installer on older boxes, or with too little RAM (try to install with 32M
and it will crash, but it could say "32M isn't enough, shall I try to
activate swap space now?" or something similar.

I nearly got there 2 nights ago but I spilled water on my keyboard and now
the keyboard is hosed. In fact, I had a glass of water in front of the
Mac, the CD tray opened without warning and knocked the water onto the
keyboard. Oops.

However the point to which I got required a reboot in the middle of the
installer (yi crashed) and it allowed me to pick back up more or less
where I was. However, it can't find root at /dev/hda8 which is indeed
where the partition table says it is. Grrrrrr! I will have to get another
keyboard and then try just the base install - it will be my 20th iteration
of the installer, more or less (although some iterations were due to a
screwed HDD, I'm on my 4th HD by now. 1 was broken, 1 was mostly broken
and too small, 1 got broken by a 32M install on which I forced a swap
partition and mounted it only to have the installer swap like crazy until
it started making funny noises and then hosed the drive).

Regards,

-- 
[Simon White. vim/mutt. simon@mtds.com. GIMPS:8.110% see www.mersenne.org]
Hofstadter's Law states that projects take longer than expected, even when
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