[plug] Redhat 7.3 install (argh!!!!)

[Adrian Blockley]

OK I finally have a working RedHat 7.3 distribution but it took a 
couple of days. I Got the distribution from the NEXT Handbooks 
packaging of RedHat 7.3. I checked CDs 1 and 2 using the checkmedia 
option and the md5checksums matched. Disk 3 on the other hand did not 
have a checksum and this, i presume, is why the install failed.

We eventually got around this by copying all the RPMs to another server 
and doing an FTP install. There were a couple of aborted attempts 
because my root partition was too small and it filled up near the end 
of the install.  got around this by doing a custom FTP install and 
selecting a smaller subset. I also had to replace my ls120 drive with a 
standard 3.5 inch floppy to get the FTP install working (RH won't boot 
off an ls120 (not easily anyway).

Finally the upgrade finished and we made a boot floppy disk just in 
case it wouldn't boot off the hard disk. Which it didn't; but it did 
successfully boot off the floppy (always make sure you make that boot 
floppy). At this point I thought I had done the hard bits and all I 
would need to do is tweak lilo and would be under way in little more 
than half an hour.

This was not the case. Neither lilo nor grub would boot from the hard 
disk.  After a day and a half I admitted defeat gave up trying to do 
the impossible upgrade and reformatted all hardisks (2 SCSI and 1 IDE) 
and did a fresh install. After another 55 minutes I had a working 
Redhat installation.

I am not too sure why I couldn't get the upgrade to work but I think 
its closely related to the fact that my original installation had 
wandered a long way from the original redhat defaults.

I have a colleague who swears by Debian - he has been walking round 
with a big grin and telling me how easy his last upgrade was (sigh...)

Cheers

Adrian    

On 2002.09.03 13:12 Bret Busby wrote:
> 
> I don't know how you would check the CD; unless you did something like
> a
> du -s, or a df on it, and compared the figures with a known good CD.
> The
> only thing of which I can think, is to do a byte count (or as near as
> possible), on your CD #3, and compare it with a known good CD #3.
> 
> I am curious to the source of the CD set. We borrowed a copy, and
> installed it, then copied the CD's, and installed from the copy that
> we made, to test the copy. We have RH 7.3 on two of our computers, so
> far. We had no problems with the CD #3.
> 
> --
> Bret Busby

-- 
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Adrian  Blockley	 32 Darwinia Loop Canningvale WA, 6155
a.blockley at poboxes.com

Ph: 08 9256 1953
Mobile: 0405 609 990