Disk Druid - Fedora flame #1

[Gene Heskett]

On Sunday 23 January 2005 10:30, Matthew Saltzman wrote:
>On Sun, 23 Jan 2005, Jeff Vian wrote:
>> On Sat, 2005-01-22 at 21:48 +0000, Timothy Murphy wrote:
>>> Les Mikesell wrote:
>>>> If you have another Linux machine on the network you can speed
>>>> up installs and avoid CD issues by doing an NFS install.  Just
>>>> download the iso images to a directory on a Linux box that is
>>>> exported via NFS and burn only the first disk.  Then enter
>>>> 'linux askmethod' at the boot prompt, pick NFS as the install
>>>> method and fill in the details for the NFS export.  The
>>>> installer will do all the magic of mounting the images for you. 
>>>> It is faster than CDs and you don't have to hang around to swap
>>>> disks.
>>>
>>> As a matter of interest I tried this ("linux askmethod")
>>> but it didn't appear to have any effect.
>>> When I reached the choice of method NFS was listed
>>> (this is what I wanted to try)
>>> but I was unable to choose it -
>>> if I did, it simply returned at once to the same choices.
>>> (All that I was able to choose was Local CD or Hard disk.)
>>>
>>> I assume the reason is that I had no IP connection at that
>>> moment. In fact I have only one PMCIA slot,
>>> and that was occupied by the CD reader.
>>>
>>> Is it in fact possible to install over the net in this case?
>>
>> It is physically impossible to do an NFS (or any other kind of
>> network) install unless you have a network connection available at
>> boot time.
>>
>> If you only have one pcmcia slot and are using it for the cdrom
>> then I guess not.
>
>This thread has evolved a bunch since I stopped following it
> closely, but if I follow what's going on, I think there are two
> alternatives.  Both involve repartitioning the disk in a separate
> step.
>
>(1) You can do a hard disk install.  You need to partition the disk
> so there is a partition you won't reformat (e.g. a separate /home).
>  Then copy the ISOs to a directory there and boot off the CD.  (I
> vaguely remember that this was discussed but I don't recall why you
> couldn't do it.)
>
>(2) I read somewhere that you could create a partition on the disk
> and install the boot.iso image.  You could then boot from that hard
> disk partition with the network card plugged in and do a network
> install.  Now, I don't know the details of making it work, but
> maybe soemone else on the list does?
>
>If both of these alternatives have been considered and rejected,
> then sorry to interrupt.

I've not tried the HD install, and atm the machine isn't bootable due 
to the formatting of the disk wipeing out the grub install.

What I've done so far this morning was to try one more time to do the 
NFS install, and that fails no permission on the client, and with the 
exports file saying it (r0,no_security) it doesn't even log the 
attempt on this box where the iso's live.

Next I burnt another copy of disk 2 on a different brand of cd-r at a 
slower speed, and used that for disk 2 of a cd install.

It installs openoffice from disk 2 ok, then tries to install the 
openoffice-i18n which would be automaticly selected by my checking 
everything in the opening config screens.  And that pukes, regardless 
of which disk I use for disk 2.

My theory is that with only half a gig of ram in this box, tryiung to 
unpack and install a 600+ megabyte (unpacked size according th=o the 
screen reports) is doomed to failure.  Except that it actually did 
work one time when I did the partitioning by hand.  But it failed on 
the next install without re-partitioning the drive, and has failed on 
every "autopartition" setup since.  FWIW, I do NOT see it setting up 
a swap partition when this is done.

But, I'm going to go back down and boot the rescue cd and see if a 
swap shows up on /dev/hdb now thats its installed the first cd.

It does not, so while I was on the rescue cd, I fdisk'd a 1GB swap as 
hdb2, and gave it the rest of the drive as /.

A new graphical install formatting and useing those partitions is now 
underway, but without the openoffice-i18n stuff.  If it works, fine, 
then I'm thru screwing with this, its been a 2 week long almost 
non-stop headache for me.  Then I'll reclaim all of hda, a 60 gigger, 
for BDI-Live, RC46, and continue with the driver development I've now 
been out of since I came down with hell of a cold a few days before 
Christmas.  I'll make each install 100% self contained this time, 
seperate /boots, seperate /swaps etc. mainly because the same version 
of e2fsck, 1.35, is part of each install, and everything is setup as 
ext3, but the e2fsck's can only check their own partitions.  I can 
cross mount them just fine, but if I put them into the others 
respective fstabs, all I get are messages to the effect that I need a 
newer version of e2fsck when it comes time (# of mounts) to do the 
checking.  A royal PITA that.

It seems to have made it past openoffice so I expect this install will 
work.  Silly Q though, are all the combined i18n files so big that 
they virtually double the size of the install?  With, about 6.5GB, 
without, about 3.5GB...  That seems excessive.

>--
>   Matthew Saltzman
>
>Clemson University Math Sciences
>mjs AT clemson DOT edu
>http://www.math.clemson.edu/~mjs

-- 
Cheers, Gene
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