Bad night with FC-5 - some things to try...

[David Timms]

Timothy Murphy wrote:
> Michael A. Peters wrote:
>>>  I got an error on CD#4 - an rpm was not found.
At the moment when it was trying to read the rpm from the CD, there was 
an error:
1. can you now copy that single file from the CD to your hard disc ? 
(no: bad burn/cd/bad source image). When I have seen this in the past, 
there is a fault where the PC can not read the given rpm file, 
repeatable with a second cd/DVD drive and on another PC.  Another time I 
had CD's that worked fine on one PC, but not on another...

2. Do you know about the hard drive install method ? This is where you 
place the (sha1sum checked) iso images in a folder on your hard disk 
(this may need to be on a separate partition/disk if you are intending 
to format the file systems as part of the install), linux askmethod, 
then choose hard disk. As you can imagine, this takes the writing / 
reading of the CD out of the equation, and may be the simplest way to 
ensure CD/DVD issues are not the cause of your problems. It may also be 
quicker to complete than the from the CD drive (which can only reach its 
xY speed at the outer edge (end) of the disc).

>> If that doesn't work (and I've seen even that fail, especially on
>> laptops - seems that the pcmcia utils on the fc5 disk has a bug with
>> some laptops preventing cardbus cards from working) - then I do a fc4
>> install.
I have done CD, DVD and ftp installs (not upgrades) on a couple of very 
different HP notebooks with and without using PCCard network adapters, 
and are yet to see an issue.

>> After installing fc4 I yum update the kernel (a must), then update yum,
>> then I install the fedora-release from fc5. This then allows me to do a
>> yum update to bring it up to fc5.
> 
> It doesn't seem that your experience is very different from mine.
But I think a lot different than most, sorry to hear you guys are having 
  this trouble.

> It's a pity, because it means that I could not recommend a newbie
> to try Fedora, as the risk of failure during installation is too high.
If you mean a newbie who doesn't have linux on their machine, I think 
that this is far more likely to work without problems (eg 6 out of 6 
machines of various ages without trouble for myself). I haven't tried 
updates from FC3 or FC4 myself; did you look at info like:
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/DistributionUpgrades?highlight=%28upgrade%29

> On my experience, the probability of a failure while reading the CDs
> is at least 30%.
The probability of
a dodgy cd
a dodgy cd drive
a dodgy cable
a dodgy burn
a burn of a dodgy iso file (sha1sum FC5-disc1. .iso and compare to the 
download.fedora.redhat.com sha1sums)
I reckon are the main contributing factors.
CD's vary in quality/drives as well/and there a many where design 
corners are cut so that they may meet spec the day you buy them but no 
longer meet spec after a few months. Also drive firmware and PC BIOS 
often have (out of spec) issues that contribute, meaning that until 
someone reports an issue with a particular manufacturer cd drive, 
developers must assume there is no problems.

I have found times when eg. a written CD will work if the machine/drive 
and CD are cold. But the same combination wont work once the drive/cd 
has been in operation for some time, especially immediately after 
burning ! One time this was the lead in to total failure of the CDROM 
drive in being able to actually read any disk.

DaveT (never done an x86_64 install nor upgrade)