->fc6: Pkg Installation - "may take several minutes" - 36 hours later!!

[sean darcy]

Upgrading to FC6, off a hard disk partition. Text install 
goes without error, until the Package Installation screen 
appears. There's a popup:

"starting install process. This may take several minutes..."

That was 36 hours ago!

No disk access lights flashing.

This is a slow old machine 400mz, 128meg ram, but it runs fc5.

Any suggestions?

sean

[Chris]

sean wrote:
>  Upgrading to FC6, off a hard disk partition. Text install goes
> without
>  error, until the Package Installation screen appears. There's a popup:
>  
>  "starting install process. This may take several minutes..."
>  
>  That was 36 hours ago!
>  
>  No disk access lights flashing.
>  
>  This is a slow old machine 400mz, 128meg ram, but it runs fc5.
>  
>  Any suggestions?
>  
>  sean
>   
What?! Are you complaining that you have to wait a little while for
something that is free?!

How rude!!!! :)

-- 
Best regards,
Chris

Use at own risk.

[Kam Leo]

On 4/25/07, sean <seandarcy2(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote:
>  Upgrading to FC6, off a hard disk partition. Text install
>  goes without error, until the Package Installation screen
>  appears. There's a popup:
>
>  "starting install process. This may take several minutes..."
>
>  That was 36 hours ago!
>
>  No disk access lights flashing.
>
>  This is a slow old machine 400mz, 128meg ram, but it runs fc5.
>
>  Any suggestions? 
Yes, next time do a clean install! Your system has too little memory
installed. You need at least 256 MB, preferably more.

>  sean

[Chris Jones]

>  Yes, next time do a clean install! Your system has too little memory
>  installed. You need at least 256 MB, preferably more. 
Which is a ridiculous state of affairs IMHO. What if the user only wants a 
light desktop system, or a headless server. For these things 128M should be 
fine. Not exactly nippy but would run OK.

As things stand at the moment, the standard anaconda installer requires as 
much memory as a full gnome/kde desktop. Is it just me me thinks this is just 
a tad silly.

There are many desktops out there that run fine with 128M, XFCe or fvwm for 
instance. XFCE is even part of extras. So an installer that requires more ram 
that the system it is installing.... go figure.

Chris

[Aaron Konstam]

On Wed, 2007-04-25 at 23:01 +0100, Chris Jones wrote:
>  > Yes, next time do a clean install! Your system has too little
> memory
>  > installed. You need at least 256 MB, preferably more.
>  
>  Which is a ridiculous state of affairs IMHO. What if the user only wants a 
>  light desktop system, or a headless server. For these things 128M should be 
>  fine. Not exactly nippy but would run OK.
>  
>  As things stand at the moment, the standard anaconda installer requires as 
>  much memory as a full gnome/kde desktop. Is it just me me thinks this is just 
>  a tad silly.
>  
>  There are many desktops out there that run fine with 128M, XFCe or fvwm for 
>  instance. XFCE is even part of extras. So an installer that requires more ram 
>  that the system it is installing.... go figure.
>  
>  Chris
>   
It is silly but that is the way it is. It reminds me that I just saw
"Showstoppers", the book about the development of WinNT. An argument
arose between Bill Gates and David Carver (the developer). Gates said it
should run in 1M of ram ; Carver held out for 8M. 
Now we have Vista that takes 1G. That's progress?
--
=======================================================================
Try to value useful qualities in one who loves you.
=======================================================================
Aaron Konstam telephone: [phone] e-mail: akonstam(a)sbcglobal.net

[Alan Cox]

On Wed, 25 Apr 2007 17:40:52 -0400
sean <seandarcy2(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote:

>  Upgrading to FC6, off a hard disk partition. Text install 
>  goes without error, until the Package Installation screen 
>  appears. There's a popup:
>  
>  "starting install process. This may take several minutes..."
>  
>  That was 36 hours ago!
>  
>  No disk access lights flashing.
>  
>  This is a slow old machine 400mz, 128meg ram, but it runs fc5. 
128MB is pushing it for an update but it will find and use your swap so
it ought to be ok. 36 hours on I'd have expected the system to have
finished (and if not to be thrashing the disk like a lunatic trying to
fit stuff in swap)

How much swap does the box have ?

[sean darcy]

Alan Cox wrote:
>  On Wed, 25 Apr 2007 17:40:52 -0400
>  sean <seandarcy2(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote:
>  
> > Upgrading to FC6, off a hard disk partition. Text install 
> > goes without error, until the Package Installation screen 
> > appears. There's a popup:
> >
> > "starting install process. This may take several minutes..."
> >
> > That was 36 hours ago!
> >
> > No disk access lights flashing.
> >
> > This is a slow old machine 400mz, 128meg ram, but it runs fc5.
>  
>  128MB is pushing it for an update but it will find and use your swap so
>  it ought to be ok. 36 hours on I'd have expected the system to have
>  finished (and if not to be thrashing the disk like a lunatic trying to
>  fit stuff in swap)
>  
>  How much swap does the box have ?
>   
There's a 1 gig swap partition. It's an old Gateway the I 
use without X, just cli, as an internal firewall, dhcp 
server, etc. I'd like to upgrade to keep all the little 
housekeeping settings I've made over the years.

I'm also surprised it's not disk trashing - that's what I 
expected. 36 hours might not be too long to actually install 
  the packages.

But it never even started - no disk access light once the 
Package Installation screen came up.

It there any way to check if anaconda actually finds the 
swap partition ( Which shouldn't be hard - only one disk, 
swap is hda2 )?

Would installing the fedora-release rpms, and then yum 
upgrade be a better strategy?

sean

[Goksin Akdeniz]

>  Would installing the fedora-release rpms, and then yum
>  upgrade be a better strategy? 
FC6 requires 256 MB of ram. Please check out the system requirements.
-- 
Goksin Akdeniz

http://www.enixma.org
http://www.linuxnet.com.tr

[Rahul Sundaram]

Goksin Akdeniz wrote:
> > Would installing the fedora-release rpms, and then yum
> > upgrade be a better strategy?
>  
>  FC6 requires 256 MB of ram. Please check out the system requirements. 
Not really. It depends on what software you are running.

Rahul

[Aaron Konstam]

On Thu, 2007-04-26 at 03:54 +0530, Rahul Sundaram wrote:
>  Goksin Akdeniz wrote:
>  >> Would installing the fedora-release rpms, and then yum
>  >> upgrade be a better strategy?
>  > 
>  > FC6 requires 256 MB of ram. Please check out the system requirements.
>  
>  Not really. It depends on what software you are running.
>  
>  Rahul
>   
Rahul,
Has any one among the Fedora group actually upgraded to FC6 using 128 K
of RAM? I admit it depends on things but it should be between difficult
to impossible in most hardware.
-- 
Aaron Konstam tel: [phone] akonstam(a)sbcglobal.net

[Marko Vojinovic]

On Thursday 26 April 2007 13:53, Aaron Konstam wrote:
>  Rahul,
>  Has any one among the Fedora group actually upgraded to FC6 using 128 K
>  of RAM? I admit it depends on things but it should be between difficult
>  to impossible in most hardware. 
I did. Though it was not an upgrade, but a clean install. The machine was 
700Mhz (or so), with 128MB ram. Anaconda wanted to format and use the swap 
partition as soon as I chose the layout of partitions, and I allowed it. 
After solving the faulty cd drive issue, the install went smoothly. Minimum 
set of packages, though I did not try more than that.

However, it was *not* an upgrade.

Best regards, :-)
Marko

Marko Vojinovic
Institute of Physics
University of Belgrade
======================
e-mail: vmarko(a)phy.bg.ac.yu

[Kam Leo]

On 4/25/07, sean <seandarcy2(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote:
>  Alan Cox wrote:
>  > On Wed, 25 Apr 2007 17:40:52 -0400
>  > sean <seandarcy2(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote:
>  >
>  >> Upgrading to FC6, off a hard disk partition. Text install
>  >> goes without error, until the Package Installation screen
>  >> appears. There's a popup:
>  >>
>  >> "starting install process. This may take several minutes..."
>  >>
>  >> That was 36 hours ago!
>  >>
>  >> No disk access lights flashing.
>  >>
>  >> This is a slow old machine 400mz, 128meg ram, but it runs fc5.
>  >
>  > 128MB is pushing it for an update but it will find and use your swap so
>  > it ought to be ok. 36 hours on I'd have expected the system to have
>  > finished (and if not to be thrashing the disk like a lunatic trying to
>  > fit stuff in swap)
>  >
>  > How much swap does the box have ?
>  >
>
>  There's a 1 gig swap partition. It's an old Gateway the I
>  use without X, just cli, as an internal firewall, dhcp
>  server, etc. I'd like to upgrade to keep all the little
>  housekeeping settings I've made over the years.
>
>  I'm also surprised it's not disk trashing - that's what I
>  expected. 36 hours might not be too long to actually install
>    the packages.
>
>  But it never even started - no disk access light once the
>  Package Installation screen came up.
>
>  It there any way to check if anaconda actually finds the
>  swap partition ( Which shouldn't be hard - only one disk,
>  swap is hda2 )? 
What shows on the other console (ctrl-alt-F2)?

>  Would installing the fedora-release rpms, and then yum
>  upgrade be a better strategy?
>  
Definitely, since you won't go through two update cycles, i.e. first
install FC6 over older version and then update newly installed but
stale packages.

>  sean

[sean darcy]

Kam Leo wrote:
>  On 4/25/07, sean <seandarcy2(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote:
> > Alan Cox wrote:
> > > On Wed, 25 Apr 2007 17:40:52 -0400
> > > sean <seandarcy2(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote:
> > >
> > >> Upgrading to FC6, off a hard disk partition. Text install
> > >> goes without error, until the Package Installation screen
> > >> appears. There's a popup:
> > >>
> > >> "starting install process. This may take several minutes..."
> > >>
> > >> That was 36 hours ago!
> > >>
> > >> No disk access lights flashing.
> > >>
> > >> This is a slow old machine 400mz, 128meg ram, but it runs fc5.
> > >
> > > 128MB is pushing it for an update but it will find and use your swap so
> > > it ought to be ok. 36 hours on I'd have expected the system to have
> > > finished (and if not to be thrashing the disk like a lunatic trying to
> > > fit stuff in swap)
> > >
> > > How much swap does the box have ?
> > >
> >
> > There's a 1 gig swap partition. It's an old Gateway the I
> > use without X, just cli, as an internal firewall, dhcp
> > server, etc. I'd like to upgrade to keep all the little
> > housekeeping settings I've made over the years.
> >
> > I'm also surprised it's not disk trashing - that's what I
> > expected. 36 hours might not be too long to actually install
> >   the packages.
> >
> > But it never even started - no disk access light once the
> > Package Installation screen came up.
> >
> > It there any way to check if anaconda actually finds the
> > swap partition ( Which shouldn't be hard - only one disk,
> > swap is hda2 )?
>  
>  What shows on the other console (ctrl-alt-F2)?
>   
Never knew you could access another console on install.

The install kernel did find a swap partition with 360 megs. 
70megs were cached, ~ 300 megs free.

top showed anaconda cpu at 99.4% and .exe ( ?? ) at 0.5%.

So maybe anaconda really doing something - hard to imagine 
if it's not accessing the disk but maybe another night could 
  show progress.

What is anaconda supposed to be doing at this stage?

sean

[Rick Stevens]

On Wed, 2007-04-25 at 19:02 -0400, sean wrote:
>  Kam Leo wrote:
>  > On 4/25/07, sean <seandarcy2(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote:
>  >> Alan Cox wrote:
>  >> > On Wed, 25 Apr 2007 17:40:52 -0400
>  >> > sean <seandarcy2(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote:
>  >> >
>  >> >> Upgrading to FC6, off a hard disk partition. Text install
>  >> >> goes without error, until the Package Installation screen
>  >> >> appears. There's a popup:
>  >> >>
>  >> >> "starting install process. This may take several minutes..."
>  >> >>
>  >> >> That was 36 hours ago!
>  >> >>
>  >> >> No disk access lights flashing.
>  >> >>
>  >> >> This is a slow old machine 400mz, 128meg ram, but it runs fc5.
>  >> >
>  >> > 128MB is pushing it for an update but it will find and use your swap so
>  >> > it ought to be ok. 36 hours on I'd have expected the system to have
>  >> > finished (and if not to be thrashing the disk like a lunatic trying to
>  >> > fit stuff in swap)
>  >> >
>  >> > How much swap does the box have ?
>  >> >
>  >>
>  >> There's a 1 gig swap partition. It's an old Gateway the I
>  >> use without X, just cli, as an internal firewall, dhcp
>  >> server, etc. I'd like to upgrade to keep all the little
>  >> housekeeping settings I've made over the years.
>  >>
>  >> I'm also surprised it's not disk trashing - that's what I
>  >> expected. 36 hours might not be too long to actually install
>  >>   the packages.
>  >>
>  >> But it never even started - no disk access light once the
>  >> Package Installation screen came up.
>  >>
>  >> It there any way to check if anaconda actually finds the
>  >> swap partition ( Which shouldn't be hard - only one disk,
>  >> swap is hda2 )?
>  > 
>  > What shows on the other console (ctrl-alt-F2)?
>  > 
>  
>  Never knew you could access another console on install.
>  
>  The install kernel did find a swap partition with 360 megs. 
>  70megs were cached, ~ 300 megs free.
>  
>  top showed anaconda cpu at 99.4% and .exe ( ?? ) at 0.5%.
>  
>  So maybe anaconda really doing something - hard to imagine 
>  if it's not accessing the disk but maybe another night could 
>    show progress.
>  
>  What is anaconda supposed to be doing at this stage? 
Well, one of the things it has to sort out is package dependencies.
That doesn't thrash the HD so much as it does RAM.  I'm willing to bet
that's what's happening.

----------------------------------------------------------------------
- Rick Stevens, Principal Engineer             rstevens(a)internap.com -
- VitalStream, Inc.                       http://www.vitalstream.com -
-                                                                    -
-      Cuteness can be overcome through sufficient bastardry         -
-                                         --Mark 'Kamikaze' Hughes   -
----------------------------------------------------------------------

[Ed Landaveri]

Alan, Did you enable the Extras repositories before doing the install? It happen to me
when I wanted to install the whole selection of games (200) from the Extras and after 6
hours nothing happened. I restarted the install unchecked FC Extras repositories, do the
install and after first boot, run  pirut enable the repos and selected all the games. I
went to sleep the next morning all the games were there. Try again.
   
   


Linux user number 433512
"Free as in Freedom":
http://counter.li.org
       
---------------------------------
Ahhh...imagining that irresistible "new car" smell?
 Check outnew cars at Yahoo! Autos.

[Marko Vojinovic]

>  > What shows on the other console (ctrl-alt-F2)?
>
>  Never knew you could access another console on install. 
Yup, you can even use the apps that are already installed. I heard from a 
friend (but not tried myself) that you can even watch a movie with mplayer 
during the install :-). But maybe that is a bit too much...

>  The install kernel did find a swap partition with 360 megs.
>  70megs were cached, ~ 300 megs free.
>
>  top showed anaconda cpu at 99.4% and .exe ( ?? ) at 0.5%. 
I had the exact same behavior on a similar machine (700MHz, 128MB RAM) doing a 
clean install. On a dozen various attempts, anaconda just hanged at random 
points --- during "starting install process", or during installation of this 
or that package (mostly somwhere in the middle of the install). No matter 
graphical or text installation, no matter the selection of packages. The 
install media passed the check. The symptoms are always the same --- top 
shows anaconda is working 99%, hd is idle, everything else is waiting. 
Memtest ran ok for several hours before...

It just may be the too low memory issue, but things got better when I replaced 
the cd drive with another. Then I was able to do a smooth clean install of 
minimal set of packages, boot the machine and yum everything else needed.

Btw, that "faulty" cd drive was afterwards completely functional and had no 
problem with it since (it's back in the box).

There are two possible explanations that I gave to myself:

1) Anaconda doesn't like to try hard to read the data off the cd. If it fails 
on the first try, it hangs, pretending to be working 99.something %.
2) Gremlins and power supply issues (I've seen it happen --- cd drive and cpu 
working simultaneously are too much for the power supply...).

However, I stress again that the install *did* work with 128 MB ram, being a 
clean install, having used the swap partition and on a minimum set of 
packages. Did after anaconda was satisfied with the performance of the cd 
drive, that is. :-)

Or maybe you should just try again and again and again until it works :-).

HTH, :-)
Marko

Marko Vojinovic
Institute of Physics
University of Belgrade
======================
e-mail: vmarko(a)phy.bg.ac.yu

[Strong]

On Thu, 26 Apr 2007 10:31:53 +0000 Marko Vojinovic
<vvmarko(a)panet.co.yu&gt; wrote:
>  Yup, you can even use the apps that are already installed. I heard
>  from a friend (but not tried myself) that you can even watch a movie
>  with mplayer during the install :-) 
Can You find out how? In X?

>  I had the exact same behavior on a similar machine (700MHz, 128MB
>  RAM) doing a clean install. On a dozen various attempts, anaconda
>  just hanged at random points --- during "starting install process",
>  or during installation of this or that package (mostly somwhere in
>  the middle of the install). No matter graphical or text installation,
>  no matter the selection of packages. The install media passed the
>  check. The symptoms are always the same --- top shows anaconda is
>  working 99%, hd is idle, everything else is waiting. Memtest ran ok
>  for several hours before...   
The time has come to kick out anaconda, is it?! Or to simplify it at
least.

[Jim Cornette]

sean wrote:
>  Alan Cox wrote:
> > On Wed, 25 Apr 2007 17:40:52 -0400
> > sean <seandarcy2(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote:
> >
> >> Upgrading to FC6, off a hard disk partition. Text install goes 
> >> without error, until the Package Installation screen appears. There's 
> >> a popup:
> >>
> >> "starting install process. This may take several minutes..."
> >>
> >> That was 36 hours ago!
> >>
> >> No disk access lights flashing.
> >>
> >> This is a slow old machine 400mz, 128meg ram, but it runs fc5.
> >
> > 128MB is pushing it for an update but it will find and use your swap so
> > it ought to be ok. 36 hours on I'd have expected the system to have
> > finished (and if not to be thrashing the disk like a lunatic trying to
> > fit stuff in swap)
> >
> > How much swap does the box have ?
> >
>  
>  There's a 1 gig swap partition. It's an old Gateway the I use without X, 
>  just cli, as an internal firewall, dhcp server, etc. I'd like to upgrade 
>  to keep all the little housekeeping settings I've made over the years.
>  
>  I'm also surprised it's not disk trashing - that's what I expected. 36 
>  hours might not be too long to actually install  the packages.
>  
>  But it never even started - no disk access light once the Package 
>  Installation screen came up.
>  
>  It there any way to check if anaconda actually finds the swap partition 
>  ( Which shouldn't be hard - only one disk, swap is hda2 )?
>  
>  Would installing the fedora-release rpms, and then yum upgrade be a 
>  better strategy?
>  
>  sean
>   
I had a problem in the past that was similar to what you described. The 
installer exited and left the system with a working shell. I was able to 
go into /mnt/sysimage/root and view the logs and do other activities in 
the environment. I was text installing with 256 MB of memory. I ended up 
getting additional memory which allowed me to get a decent installation. 
(added 512 MB more of memory).
The bug was filed and I believe fixed for 256 MB, 128 MB might still 
show a similar failure.

Is it possible to add more memory to the computer?

If not, I think your proposal to install the fedora-release (and company 
for docs) package and doing a yum upgrade might work out for you. Just 
take into consideration that you'd want to get core system packages 
installed first which will probably pull in up the line packages that 
depend upon these important libraries and system utilities.
Hotplug might be an issue since it was removed and packages depending 
upon hotplug might need to be upgraded to remove the dependency on 
hotplug of past package versions. It should be less time consuming vs. 
the 36 hour wait with no activity.

Jim

-- 
It would be nice if the Food and Drug Administration stopped issuing 
warnings about toxic substances and just gave me the names of one or two 
things still safe to eat.
		-- Robert Fuoss

[Aaron Konstam]

On Wed, 2007-04-25 at 22:53 +0100, Alan Cox wrote:
>  On Wed, 25 Apr 2007 17:40:52 -0400
>  sean <seandarcy2(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote:
>  
>  > Upgrading to FC6, off a hard disk partition. Text install 
>  > goes without error, until the Package Installation screen 
>  > appears. There's a popup:
>  > 
>  > "starting install process. This may take several minutes..."
>  > 
>  > That was 36 hours ago!
>  > 
>  > No disk access lights flashing.
>  > 
>  > This is a slow old machine 400mz, 128meg ram, but it runs fc5. 
That is really
too little ram to do this. 
-- 
Aaron Konstam tel: [phone] akonstam(a)sbcglobal.net

[Wolfgang S. Rupprecht]

sean <seandarcy2(a)gmail.com&gt; writes:
>  Upgrading to FC6, off a hard disk partition. Text install goes
> without
>  error, until the Package Installation screen appears. There's a popup:
>
>  "starting install process. This may take several minutes..."
>
>  That was 36 hours ago!
>
>  No disk access lights flashing.
>
>  This is a slow old machine 400mz, 128meg ram, but it runs fc5.
>
>  Any suggestions? 
Move the disk to a more modern machine, do a clean install there.
Update to current pkgs via yum update, then move the disk back to that
old system.  This is what I had to do when I installed FC6 onto a very
old PPRO-150 w. 128Meg dram.  The machine was way too old to be able
to boot off of a CDROM, DVD or USB flash stick.

-wolfgang
-- 
Wolfgang S. Rupprecht                http://www.wsrcc.com/wolfgang/

[Robin Laing]

sean wrote:
>  Upgrading to FC6, off a hard disk partition. Text install goes
> without 
>  error, until the Package Installation screen appears. There's a popup:
>  
>  "starting install process. This may take several minutes..."
>  
>  That was 36 hours ago!
>  
>  No disk access lights flashing.
>  
>  This is a slow old machine 400mz, 128meg ram, but it runs fc5.
>  
>  Any suggestions?
>  
>  sean
>   
On my machine with 2 gig of ram, an upgrade took almost 7 hours.  A 
clean install a few weeks later took less than 4 hours complete.

My point is that an upgrade takes much longer than a clean install.


-- 
Due to the move to M$ Exchange Server,
    anything that is a priority, please phone.
Robin Laing