f20, anaconda, net install and video out of range ....

[Paul Wouters]

Hi,

I tried to help a friend upgrade his redhat 7.3 server (!) to
something more modern. Since his server's BIOS had issues with
booting from DVD, I setup a PXE environment on my laptop and
booted the net-install (and later the live image) kernel and
ram disk.

After PXE boot, and leaving the live CD in the drive, Anaconda
was able to boot the live environment. But when it tried to
enter graphics (X) the monitor reported "out of range" errors.

Changing the old LCD monitor to a 21" modern one gave the exact
same results - clearly the machine is trying something very
unreasonable rejected even on LCD's less than a year old.

The linux text console worked fine and showed the boot process.

I could even login as root and issue commands, but since this
environment was a live cd, I could not figure out how to modify
the X config and restart X to make this work.

Adding "text" to the kernel parameters did not enable a text-based
installer, and teh same out of range error apepared on the montior.
Has this functionality been depricated?

It seems these problems have been happening on and off on fedora's,
and it is not a f20 or f18+ anacondo issue alone?

Attempted workarounds included passing "text", "nomodeset", and
various video= lines. None of which prevented "out of range" errors.


It seems the last alternative to try is a vnc based install :(

If anyone has another trick up their sleeve, I'd be interested. And if
so, that trick should be added to the installer documentation (which
was actually reasoanbly good, but unfortunately did not help us)

Paul