Help with reporting broken install

[John Wendel]

On Monday 01 December 2003 03:46 pm, Rick Stevens wrote:
> John Wendel wrote:
> > I've installed Fedora on 3 boxes; 2 "everything" installs that
> > worked perfectly and 1"custom" install that is broken.
> >
> > Problems on the "broken" box:
> >
> > [1] The redhat admin tools don't run.
> >
> > The programs are there, but they don't start. When run from the
> > GUI (both gnome and kde), nothing shows up. When run from the
> > command line, I get some text complaining about "xcdroast".

>
> This was a fresh install?  xcdroast is GUI program for burning CDs
> (I prefer gtoaster), and I can't imagine why the admin tools
> reference it.
>

Thanks for the reply.

Fresh install. Had the installer wipe the / partition. All the 
"redhat-*" tools are links to "consolehelper". I assume 
"consolehelper" is hosed in some strange fashion.

> > I'm not sure what other programs might not work. All the stuff I
> > normally use seems to work fine, but I don't have a
> > warm-fuzzy-feeling about the system.
> >
> > [2] The RPM db is hosed.
> >
> > In an attempt to fix the admin tools, I tried to reinstall them.
> > First I did "rpm -e <tool-name>", which told me that <tool-name>
> > was not installed. So I mounted the CD, and did "rpm -i
> > <tool-name>", which told me that <tool-name> was already
> > installed.
> >
> > "rpm --rebuilddb" didn't fix the problem.

>
> You must first go to /var/lib/rpm and delete the __db* files:
>
> 	rm -f /var/lib/rpm/__db*
>
> THEN run "rpm --rebuilddb".
>

I'll try this as soon as I can get to the box. Thanks.


> > [3] Yum installs don't work.
> >
> > I assume that this is caused by the broken RPM db. I tried "yum
> > install k3b", which resulted in trying to download hundreds of
> > files to satisfy the dependencies. I'm sure that these files were
> > already installed. I built k3b from the tarball and it works
> > fine.

>
> That's possible.  It could be that yum downloaded lots of newer
> files that k3b needs.  It'd possibly help if you did "yum -d 10" or
> something to get yum to spit out what problems it's having.
>


The point I tried to make is that k3b didn't need any additional 
files. I built it from the source tarball and it works fine without 
adding any other packages to the system.


> > I assume the next thing to do is to reinstall Fedora. But before
> > I do, is these any information that I could collect and file with
> > a Bugzilla report? I'm not sure what would be useful to someone
> > looking at this problem.

>
> Try the above stuff.  If you do another install, make sure you have
> the installer reformat the partitions.  An install of Fedora over
> an existing RH9 system will sometimes screw up on python libraries
> (and yum won't work).  A clean install fixes it.


I always do clean installs (got burned a long time ago with an 
update). I'm definitely going to do another install, I just wanted to 
know if there was anything useful (for debugging) that I could save 
before the install.

I'd really like to provide some info to someone who understands the 
installer. It certainly seems to be fragile.

Regards,

John