Interactive boot after install from F12 alpha dvd

[Peter Glassenbury (CSSE)]

Hi,
I am looking at testing some installs for our department
workstations for next year(core 2 Duos of various speeds).
Trying F11 and F12 Alpha..
Installation via kickstart with all ('*') installed from
a copy of the F12Alpha DVD iso(installed onto a server).

Some startup services hang. Since this is the testing list,
I would just mention the F12 one which is "mdmonitor"
(??software raid on a single sata disk??)

I would LIKE to just get around this with an Interactive startup
on boot.(Where it says Press 'I' to enter interactive startup)
I have tried many reboots with I, i and holding the I key down.
I have had it ONCE go into interactive boot on F11. ZERO times
on F12Alpha(from DVD)

Can someone help with ...
  ** How to type 'I' at the right time :-|
  ** What I should do with mdmonitor from the point of view of
     finding issues with F12.. (or should I just wait until
     I can get the machine up to a state where I can do
     a "yum update" ?)

Cheers
Pete

[James Laska]

On Thu, 2009-09-10 at 17:25 +1200, Peter Glassenbury (CSSE) wrote:
> Hi,
> I am looking at testing some installs for our department
> workstations for next year(core 2 Duos of various speeds).
> Trying F11 and F12 Alpha..
> Installation via kickstart with all ('*') installed from
> a copy of the F12Alpha DVD iso(installed onto a server).
>
> Some startup services hang. Since this is the testing list,
> I would just mention the F12 one which is "mdmonitor"
> (??software raid on a single sata disk??)
>
> I would LIKE to just get around this with an Interactive startup
> on boot.(Where it says Press 'I' to enter interactive startup)
> I have tried many reboots with I, i and holding the I key down.
> I have had it ONCE go into interactive boot on F11. ZERO times
> on F12Alpha(from DVD)
>
> Can someone help with ...
>   ** How to type 'I' at the right time :-|

Thanks for the feedback Pete.  You know, I was wondering if that
'interactive (I)' boot still worked.  Thanks for testing.  If I recall,
it is fairly picky about when you press the 'I', for example ... see
this previous fedora-list thread
(https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-list/2009-April/thread.html).

As a workaround, you might try booting into single user mode.  And
starting services as needed to verify the initscripts that hang.
> ** What I should do with mdmonitor from the point of view of
>      finding issues with F12.. (or should I just wait until
>      I can get the machine up to a state where I can do
>      a "yum update" ?)

You could try updating, might get lucky.  But without knowing the cause
of the hang ... it's possible no bugs have been filed for this issue
yet.

Thanks,
James