F16 installation problems

Thu Mar 1 21:49:23 UTC 2012

On Thu, Mar 01, 2012 at 08:36:34PM +0000, n2xssvv.g02gfr12930 wrote:
> On 01/03/12 18:44, Paul W. Frields wrote:
> > On Thu, Mar 01, 2012 at 03:05:44PM +0000, n2xssvv.g02gfr12930 wrote:
> >>
> >> I have tried to do a network install of Fedora 16 multiple times, but it
> >> has failed every time! More to the point I also discovered that the
> >> anaconda install ignores changes I requested for the partition layout.
> >> Excuse me for suggesting this, but Fedora 15 and 16 releases seem to be
> >> the most troublesome releases ever, even exceeding the problems of the
> >> transition to KDE 4. In fact I'm beginning to lose patience with Fedora
> >> and will probably look at switching to another distro, so all
> >> suggestions of an alternative stable KDE distribution are welcome.
> > 
> > If you can describe exactly what you did, it would be easier to offer
> > advice or help.  For instance, a blow-by-blow of what you did at the
> > partitioning screen would be useful.
> > 
> 
> Using the network install CD, (verified from hash)
> 
> Setting it to automatically partition and use a 1 Tb drive, changing the
> GUI to be KDE rather than Gnome, it hangs after between 130 and 500
> packages have been installed. It failed the same way when no changes to
> the default packages were made.  Numerous variations, including
> simplifying the hardware to just motherboard, graphics card, memory,
> HDD, and DVD RW made no difference!  Even connecting directly to the ISP
> modem made no difference. I doubt you can suggest something new.

You can often see error messages by switching to an alternate tty:
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Anaconda/Logging

Whether you can switch (using Ctrl+Alt+F2, F3, F4, etc.) may depend on
whether you're getting a really awful problem like a kernel panic --
which may indicate a hardware error particular to your setup -- or
just a network timeout of some sort.

Ctrl+Alt+F2 will give you tty2, a shell where you can look at the
current logs in /tmp. Similarly Ctrl+Alt+F3 (tty3) and Ctrl+Alt+F4
(tty4) will give you higher level messages which might indicate the
problem.

The fact that you're having difficulty with a number of different
methods makes me think it's more likely a hardware difficulty.  Can
you verify your memory, storage, etc. are all fine using other OS
utilities?

> Using the KDE spin CD, (verified by hash and does boot in vesa mode)
> 
> Installation completes, but then fails to finish configuring the HDD
> causing the subsequent boot from grub to fail!.
> 
> Finally I have failed to burn an install DVD either on the PC or a
> laptop, it also failing multiple times! Hence my attempts to update from
> Fedora 14 appear to have been thwarted and I'm somewhat annoyed!!
> 
> After this much trouble I am becoming seriously disillusioned with Fedora!!!
> 
> Breaking news!!! I have a flaky Fedora 16 running on my PC, here's
> roughly how:
> 
> Installed from KDE spin CD
> Ran update from network install CD, (multiple times due to failures)
> 
> still cannot boot the latest kernel though, and it appears to crash far
> more frequently than I'd expect. Bottom line is I'm still not going to
> try updating my laptop from Fedora 14 until I see Fedora 16/17 become a
> lot more stable!

Well, this is a step forward, but let's not rush to conclude this is a
general or widespread F16 stability problem.  I've run both on my
hardware here with zero problems, as have many other people I know.
My whole family uses it daily on several computers and it's been solid
as a rock since the public release.  A lot of dedicated, wonderful
folks put a ton of time into making sure that Fedora is as good as
possible before that happens.

Nevertheless, do think about reporting a complete bug if you can make
the same problem happen repeatedly.  Start here for beginner
information, but if you're going to file a kernel bug, I *highly*
recommend you press on to read the more detailed information linked at
the end.

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/How_to_file_a_bug_report

-- 
Paul W. Frields                                http://paul.frields.org/
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