->fc6: Pkg Installation - "may take several minutes" - 36 hours later!!

[Rick Stevens]

On Wed, 2007-04-25 at 19:02 -0400, sean wrote:
> Kam Leo wrote:
> > On 4/25/07, sean <seandarcy2 at gmail.com> wrote:
> >> Alan Cox wrote:
> >> > On Wed, 25 Apr 2007 17:40:52 -0400
> >> > sean <seandarcy2 at gmail.com> wrote:
> >> >
> >> >> Upgrading to FC6, off a hard disk partition. Text install
> >> >> goes without error, until the Package Installation screen
> >> >> appears. There's a popup:
> >> >>
> >> >> "starting install process. This may take several minutes..."
> >> >>
> >> >> That was 36 hours ago!
> >> >>
> >> >> No disk access lights flashing.
> >> >>
> >> >> This is a slow old machine 400mz, 128meg ram, but it runs fc5.
> >> >
> >> > 128MB is pushing it for an update but it will find and use your swap so
> >> > it ought to be ok. 36 hours on I'd have expected the system to have
> >> > finished (and if not to be thrashing the disk like a lunatic trying to
> >> > fit stuff in swap)
> >> >
> >> > How much swap does the box have ?
> >> >
> >>
> >> There's a 1 gig swap partition. It's an old Gateway the I
> >> use without X, just cli, as an internal firewall, dhcp
> >> server, etc. I'd like to upgrade to keep all the little
> >> housekeeping settings I've made over the years.
> >>
> >> I'm also surprised it's not disk trashing - that's what I
> >> expected. 36 hours might not be too long to actually install
> >>   the packages.
> >>
> >> But it never even started - no disk access light once the
> >> Package Installation screen came up.
> >>
> >> It there any way to check if anaconda actually finds the
> >> swap partition ( Which shouldn't be hard - only one disk,
> >> swap is hda2 )?
> > 
> > What shows on the other console (ctrl-alt-F2)?
> > 
> 
> Never knew you could access another console on install.
> 
> The install kernel did find a swap partition with 360 megs. 
> 70megs were cached, ~ 300 megs free.
> 
> top showed anaconda cpu at 99.4% and .exe ( ?? ) at 0.5%.
> 
> So maybe anaconda really doing something - hard to imagine 
> if it's not accessing the disk but maybe another night could 
>   show progress.
> 
> What is anaconda supposed to be doing at this stage?

Well, one of the things it has to sort out is package dependencies.
That doesn't thrash the HD so much as it does RAM.  I'm willing to bet
that's what's happening.

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- Rick Stevens, Principal Engineer             rstevens at internap.com -
- VitalStream, Inc.                       http://www.vitalstream.com -
-                                                                    -
-      Cuteness can be overcome through sufficient bastardry         -
-                                         --Mark 'Kamikaze' Hughes   -
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