Fedora Core 2 Distribution Size

[Jim Cornette]

Jeremy Katz wrote:

>On Sat, 2004-01-03 at 21:48, Jim Cornette wrote:
>  
>
>>Also, I was wondering about the pick your installation choices before 
>>you  download the installation pieces. Then grab the needed package 
>>groups (modular elements, such as KDE, gnome, sysadmin, games, etc:) and 
>>then generating the final ISO images  before download. I'm not sure if 
>>this concept could be automated from the server side or could be 
>>assembled on the client side from some sort of a retriever program.
>>    
>>
>
>There's really not a good, sane way to do this unfortunately.  
>
It sounded like something that would be very hard to implement. It would 
be great for customizing your installation set though.

>
>[snip]
>  
>
>>This makes sense to me now, since the CDROMs are at hand. It would be 
>>nice though if after the installer found a working hi-speed connection, 
>>if it would present a choice for doing a network install or check for 
>>errata, which might improve the installation. (Out of disk space, 
>>firewire, default up2date retrieval information, etc).
>>    
>>
>
>Checking things like this tends to ... annoy people.  They think that
>you're calling home or something :)  Also, "high-speed" is a very vague
>term and hard to determine.  Plus, as soon as that's done, people start
>wanting ISDN and everything else support on boot disks which starts to
>get out of hand pretty quick for boot disks.  As far as updates, they're
>handled in the firstboot process.
>
With all of the different possible machine configurations and 
post-release problems discovered, it would be nice to get some sort of 
option to remedy particular problems before installation continues. I do 
understand that people keep wanting more enhancements and the installer 
becomes all too complicated to create.

>
>  
>
>>>boot.iso is located in the images/ directory and is an approximately 4
>>>meg image that you can burn to CD and start an install with.  Maybe
>>>putting it in the isos directory instead of just the tree would help
>>>raise the visibility here
>>>
>>>      
>>>
>>I downloaded and tried the boot.iso from the rawhide image directory. It 
>>detected a NIC presence on both machines that I tried it on. On the 
>>machine with dual 3com ethernet cards, it asked which ethernet card that 
>>I wanted to use. Neither came with an identity. Is kudzu and hwdata part 
>>of the boot.iso?
>>    
>>
>
>rawhide is a little busted right now.  Now that the holidays are over,
>I'll get back to tracking down why :)
>

I just did an ftp install of Rawhide on this machine. I think that 
mkinitrd is one of the items that need to be corrected. The ftp install 
of devevelopment went through in about 4 hours time from the 
download.fedora.redhat.com site and using the 
/pub/fedora/linux/core/development/i386 directory to retrieve the 
information. This was a server installation and was a clean install. I 
haven't booted into it yet to see what it will do. The initrd error 
caused me a few detours. I installed lilo because I wrecked grub when 
trying to reinstall it on my drive. I have to configure lilo to boot the 
newly installed ftp retrieved installation.

On a detour, I installed the rawhide rpms on two different machines as 
an upgrade. I have found problems with kudzu, python related programs 
up2date and one or two documentation rpms. The program conflict count is 
only about 30 programs. Most of the other programs seem to work fine on 
both machines. If I get the ftp installation booting, I'll see the 
errors with that machine.

Some excerpts from the install log are included below:

Installing 769 packages
<snip>
Installing kernel-2.6.0-1.23.i686.
WARNING: /lib/modules/2.6.0-1.23/unsupported/drivers/video/sis/sisfb.ko 
needs unknown symbol __floatsidf
WARNING: /lib/modules/2.6.0-1.23/unsupported/drivers/video/sis/sisfb.ko 
needs unknown symbol __fixunsdfsi
WARNING: /lib/modules/2.6.0-1.23/unsupported/drivers/video/sis/sisfb.ko 
needs unknown symbol __adddf3
WARNING: /lib/modules/2.6.0-1.23/unsupported/drivers/video/sis/sisfb.ko 
needs unknown symbol __divdf3
WARNING: 
/lib/modules/2.6.0-1.23/unsupported/drivers/media/dvb/ttpci/dvb-ttpci.ko 
needs unknown symbol __floatsidf
WARNING: 
/lib/modules/2.6.0-1.23/unsupported/drivers/media/dvb/ttpci/dvb-ttpci.ko 
needs unknown symbol __ltdf2
WARNING: 
/lib/modules/2.6.0-1.23/unsupported/drivers/media/dvb/ttpci/dvb-ttpci.ko 
needs unknown symbol __adddf3

>
>  
>
>>I would have found the boot.iso faster, with it being located alongside 
>>the installation ISOs. I still assumed the images directory was for 
>>floppy images , not CDROM images.  Live and learn!
>>    
>>
>
>Hmm, okay.  It's definitely something to consider.  The extra 5 megs
>wouldn't really be a huge concern for mirroring, IMHO, and if it makes
>things more obvious then it may well be worth it.  
>  
>
Thanks,

Jim

>Cheers,
>
>Jeremy
>
>  
>