Unofficial FC4.1 i386 isos

[Hans Kristian Rosbach]

After the recent discussion "FC4 state of affairs and FC5"
on fedora-devel about the possibility of making updated
installation iso images I gave it a try and actually
managed to put it together nicely.
(Can't say I liked the anaconda build utils, but ohwell)

So, if you feel like testing a potentially dangerous
unofficial release of updated FC4 install images I have
put them up on a server.

It's only i386, only cd, only torrent.

Feedback appreciated!

Please don't bug Fedora developers with FC4.1 specific bugs.

http://fedora.isphuset.no

-HK

[Thomas M Steenholdt]

Hans Kristian Rosbach wrote:
>  After the recent discussion "FC4 state of affairs and FC5"
>  on fedora-devel about the possibility of making updated
>  installation iso images I gave it a try and actually
>  managed to put it together nicely.
>  (Can't say I liked the anaconda build utils, but ohwell)
>  
>  So, if you feel like testing a potentially dangerous
>  unofficial release of updated FC4 install images I have
>  put them up on a server.
>  
>  It's only i386, only cd, only torrent.
>  
>  Feedback appreciated!
>  
>  Please don't bug Fedora developers with FC4.1 specific bugs.
>  
>  http://fedora.isphuset.no
>  
>  -HK
>   
You should really think of a different name for your distro, so nobody 
confuses it with official Fedora media.

If I'm of base here, then i apoligize, but I think this could be 
confusing at some point.

/Thomas

[Rahul Sundaram]

Hi

>  You should really think of a different name for your distro, so nobody 
>  confuses it with official Fedora media.
>
>  If I'm of base here, then i apoligize, but I think this could be 
>  confusing at some point. 
There has  been discussing before on clarifying the trademark guidelines 
so that derivatives which only include the content in Fedora Core 
(including updates) and Extras repositories can still call themselves 
Fedora. Meanwhile calling it unofficial with a disclaimer is good enough IMO

Again, nice work. I am pretty happy that the community stepped up on 
providing this functionality requested by many people

regards
Rahul

[Alan Cox]

On Sat, Sep 17, 2005 at 02:57:46PM +0530, Rahul Sundaram wrote:
>  There has  been discussing before on clarifying the trademark
> guidelines 
>  so that derivatives which only include the content in Fedora Core 
>  (including updates) and Extras repositories can still call themselves 
>  Fedora. Meanwhile calling it unofficial with a disclaimer is good enough IMO 
One possibility would be to recognize these various updated discs people
are doing as a specific item - say "Fedora Respin"

[Warren Togami]

Hans Kristian Rosbach wrote:
>  After the recent discussion "FC4 state of affairs and FC5"
>  on fedora-devel about the possibility of making updated
>  installation iso images I gave it a try and actually
>  managed to put it together nicely.
>  (Can't say I liked the anaconda build utils, but ohwell)
>  
>  So, if you feel like testing a potentially dangerous
>  unofficial release of updated FC4 install images I have
>  put them up on a server.
>  
>  It's only i386, only cd, only torrent.
>  
>  Feedback appreciated!
>  
>  Please don't bug Fedora developers with FC4.1 specific bugs.
>  
>  http://fedora.isphuset.no
>  
>  -HK
>   
Great work and good idea with the torrent-only distribution, very 
efficient.  Also thank you for calling it unofficial.

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=159026
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=159087
You may want to look into backporting some of the more important fixes 
in order to avoid some of the nastier install problems of FC4.

http://people.redhat.com/wtogami/temp/1398/
As for the kernel I personally think 1398 is far less problematic for 
most folks than 1447.  I copied all of the 1398 kernels for you here if 
you want to try that instead.  Or maybe you should wait for a better new 
FC4 update kernel to hit the official tree.

Since you will probably be respinning several times as you incorporate 
more bug fixes, you may want to use X.Y.Z versioned filenames with a 
separate changelog page on your website to explain what changed without 
users needing to download the entire torrent to find out.  In your 
respins try to focus on issues that screw up the install process.  All 
other bugs in the distribution are easily fixed with up2date or yum 
after and far less important.

Warren Togami
wtogami(a)redhat.com

[Hans Kristian Rosbach]

On Fri, 2005-09-16 at 11:33 -1000, Warren Togami wrote:

>  Great work and good idea with the torrent-only distribution, very 
>  efficient. 
Thank you.

>  Also thank you for calling it unofficial. 
Anything else would just be wrong :)

>  https://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=159026
>  https://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=159087
>  You may want to look into backporting some of the more important fixes 
>  in order to avoid some of the nastier install problems of FC4. 
While those most certainly are interesting bugs, I currently have no
idea where to start looking to fix these.
If anyone have directions or even better: patches or rpms then please
send them to me.

>  http://people.redhat.com/wtogami/temp/1398/
>  As for the kernel I personally think 1398 is far less problematic for 
>  most folks than 1447.  I copied all of the 1398 kernels for you here if 
>  you want to try that instead.  Or maybe you should wait for a better new 
>  FC4 update kernel to hit the official tree. 
I'll have to have a look at these on Monday. All my computers are packed
up in boxes ready to be moved to my new house.

A recommendation and maybe future dialog with the kernel packager could
come in handy here.

>  Since you will probably be respinning several times as you
> incorporate 
>  more bug fixes, you may want to use X.Y.Z versioned filenames with a 
>  separate changelog page on your website to explain what changed without 
>  users needing to download the entire torrent to find out.  In your 
>  respins try to focus on issues that screw up the install process.  All 
>  other bugs in the distribution are easily fixed with up2date or yum 
>  after and far less important. 
As this was basicly a test to see how much effort this kind of thing
would need, I made this first release as simple as possible. Just stock
update rpms, nothing fancy yet.

My next step is to backtrace the steps I did, and analyze how to best
script this. There was a lot of trial-and-error, manual labor and
a whole lot of reading code just to understand what the different utils
were doing.

With good scripts I might also make more than just i386 images if there
is enough interest in the current release.

Then _IF_ I get too much spare time on my hands I'll attempt to write
a script that will generate a full changelog of all changed rpms by
parsing the changelog data of the rpms and comparing.

Have a good weekend people!

-HK

[Kenneth Porter]

--On Saturday, September 17, 2005 12:26 AM +0200 Hans Kristian Rosbach 
<hk(a)isphuset.no&gt; wrote:

>  My next step is to backtrace the steps I did, and analyze how to
> best
>  script this. There was a lot of trial-and-error, manual labor and
>  a whole lot of reading code just to understand what the different utils
>  were doing. 
This is the part I anxiously await. Thanks for the effort!

[Daniel Veillard]

On Sat, Sep 17, 2005 at 07:39:05AM -0700, Kenneth Porter wrote:
>  --On Saturday, September 17, 2005 12:26 AM +0200 Hans Kristian
> Rosbach 
>  <hk(a)isphuset.no&gt; wrote:
>  
>  >My next step is to backtrace the steps I did, and analyze how to best
>  >script this. There was a lot of trial-and-error, manual labor and
>  >a whole lot of reading code just to understand what the different utils
>  >were doing.
>  
>  This is the part I anxiously await. Thanks for the effort! 
  yes that's excellent, thanks !

Daniel

-- 
Daniel Veillard      | Red Hat Desktop team http://redhat.com/
veillard(a)redhat.com  | libxml GNOME XML XSLT toolkit  http://xmlsoft.org/
http://veillard.com/ | Rpmfind RPM search engine http://rpmfind.net/

[Warren Togami]

Hans Kristian Rosbach wrote:
>  
> >https://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=159026
> >https://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=159087
> >You may want to look into backporting some of the more important fixes 
> >in order to avoid some of the nastier install problems of FC4.
>  
>  
>  While those most certainly are interesting bugs, I currently have no
>  idea where to start looking to fix these.
>  If anyone have directions or even better: patches or rpms then please
>  send them to me. 
Please keep in mind that fixing the installer bugs is probably one of 
the more important reasons for spinning your own installer discs.

Warren Togami
wtogami(a)redhat.com

[Hans Kristian Rosbach]

On Sat, 2005-09-17 at 13:11 -1000, Warren Togami wrote:
>  Hans Kristian Rosbach wrote:
>  > 
>  >>https://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=159026
>  >>https://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=159087
>  >>You may want to look into backporting some of the more important fixes 
>  >>in order to avoid some of the nastier install problems of FC4.
>  > 
>  > 
>  > While those most certainly are interesting bugs, I currently have no
>  > idea where to start looking to fix these.
>  > If anyone have directions or even better: patches or rpms then please
>  > send them to me.
>  
>  Please keep in mind that fixing the installer bugs is probably one of 
>  the more important reasons for spinning your own installer discs. 
This is true, and IF possible I will do so.

But from my so far very limited understanding of anaconda internals,
and the look of those bugs (No patches? No way to recreate?) I doubt
that I can fix them on my own.

If somebody who knows anaconda wants to join my effort then please
send me a private email. Backporting bugfixes and possibly minor
improvements for anaconda would indeed be a good thing.

In other news, the FC4.1 images can successfully install on two
servers here that never worked with FC4.
(Instant reboot and no support for disk controller)
Both are problems I attributed to the kernel.

Regarding the current kernel beeing sub-optimal, it is kind of
a thing we need to wait for the next release. Reverting to an
older version is not what I want to do for an updated release.

So far I have not gotten any negative feedback, and the downloads are
steadily rolling out. This is kind of a busy week for me, so don't
expect too much in the ways of changelogs or scripts for now.

-HK

[Jeff Pitman]

On Saturday 17 September 2005 05:33, Warren Togami wrote:
>  http://people.redhat.com/wtogami/temp/1398/
>  As for the kernel I personally think 1398 is far less problematic for
>  most folks than 1447.  I copied all of the 1398 kernels for you here
>  if you want to try that instead.  Or maybe you should wait for a
>  better new FC4 update kernel to hit the official tree. 
If it's that bad, why didn't we rollback to 1398 after the discovery of 
badness?

-- 
-jeff

[Michael A. Peters]

On Sat, 2005-09-17 at 11:49 +0800, Jeff Pitman wrote:
>  On Saturday 17 September 2005 05:33, Warren Togami wrote:
>  > http://people.redhat.com/wtogami/temp/1398/
>  > As for the kernel I personally think 1398 is far less problematic for
>  > most folks than 1447.  I copied all of the 1398 kernels for you here
>  > if you want to try that instead.  Or maybe you should wait for a
>  > better new FC4 update kernel to hit the official tree.
>  
>  If it's that bad, why didn't we rollback to 1398 after the discovery of 
>  badness? 
It's not bad for me :)