Heads up for a possible install issue with FC3rcX this weekend.

[Kim Lux]

[Bug 137650] New: Install reports
"Probably out of disk space" when
copying install image.
                              Date: 
Fri, 29 Oct 2004 18:30:41 -0400
(16:30 MDT)



Description of problem:

The FC3rc3 install process gave me an out of disk space error when
installing on a formerly used hard drive with empty partitions. 

I was installing FC3rc3 from CDROM (CDRW disks) on a dual boot machine
with a previous install of FC3T3.  I select a brand new installation,
not an upgrade of what is already there.  I'm manually partitioned the
drive with disk druid. 

I've tried partitioning 3 different ways: 1)leaving the partitions
alone, 2) removing them entirely and re adding and reformatting them
and 3) just reformatting them as they are.

There are 4 actual partitions on the disk: hda1 = XP, hda2 = /boot,
hda3 = swap; hda4 = placeholder, hda5 = "/"  All the Linux partitions
are empty, save for "lost and found".  I've checked their sizes in
linux-rescue by temporarily mounting them and then doing a df.

The error I received was:

"An error occurred transferring the install image to your hard drive.
 You are probably out of disk space."  It then take me back to the
start of the actual installation process.  I rebooted the install disk
several times.  I changed the partitions around.  I changed the
package selection.  

I watched and the system does seem to reformat the drive when it is 
supposed to.  (The drive light runs anyway.)  The progress bar of the
image copy gets to about 80% when the cdrom drive stops.  Then the
error message appears.  

The hard drive checks out fine (fsck from linux-rescue) and the cdrom
has passed "media test" three times.  I've also run a memcheck86 and
it too passes.

My laptop is about a month old and has been rock solid.  

Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable):

Whatever shipped on the Oct 28 version of the ISO rpms at
i386/fc3-rc/3/ at duke.edu. 


How reproducible:

I tried about 10 times to install with no success. 

Steps to Reproduce:

It did eventually install.  Truthfully I don't know what happened
because I was talking on the phone with a friend and pressing keys at
the same time and suddenly it was installing packages. 

I don't know if it is reproducable now because I haven't tried to
install on the laptop since.

Additional info:

The machine is an HP7280 laptop.  It has a 5400 RPM 80 GB drive and an
4x DVD burner/CDRW.  I burnt the ISO CDRW disks on this machine and
they passed validation testing in K3B as well as the media check on
the Linux boot disk.


The partition settings were:

/dev/hda1: XP 20 GB
/dev/hda2: /boot 100 MB ext3
/dev/hda3: swap  1 GB
/dev/hda4: logical
/dev/hda5: / remainder, ext3


I think that the package selected was small when it finally installed.
 My initial package selection was large and custom, ie workstation +
development tools, not server with X or a desktop install.

Which partition does anaconda copy the install image too ?  Is it
possible that it was using /boot and that the install image was bigger
than the space on it ?  Just an idea ?


Comment: when and if this happens, the computer is unusable.  At this
point in the installation, grub.conf is empty and thus XP won't boot if
you are dual booting.  There is also nothing left on the Linux
partitions to run.