I had high hopes for FC5, damn...

[Paul Howarth]

Reg Clemens wrote:
>> clemens at dwf.com wrote:
>>> I had hight hopes for FC5, HELL, I was even going to install it
>>> on my LAB machines without first testing it at home.
>>>
>>> But some visionary has turned it into crap.
>>>
>>> When doing an install, if the installer cant find a package you
>>> used to get a message asking if you wanted it to try again. 
>>> Whenever I got this message, either rereading , or 
>>> popping the CD out, and cleaning it did the trick, next try
>>> the installer was able to read the package and the install 
>>> continued, with a bit of a delay.
>>>
>>> Now some clown has 'fixed' this so that the only option you get
>>> is to REBOOT.  I dont need a button to reboot, I can manage that
>>> quite easily with <CTL><ALT><DEL> or a power cycle.
>>>
>>> My guess is, that I have some machines where I will NEVER be
>>> able to install FC5 due to this improvment.  And Im not going
>>> to try multiple times on the others, just to get a clean install.
>>>
>>> Sigh.
>>>
>>> On a slightly more positive note, is there any way around this
>>> improvement? Does TEXT mode do the same thing?
>>>
>> Ways around this improvement:
>>
>> Burn the disk slower.
>> Use different (better) media.
>> Use a different CD or DVD burner to burn the disk.
>> Use a different CD or DVD reader to perform the install.
>> Use a hard disk install
>> Use a FTP install
>> Use a HTTP install
>> Use a NFS install.
>> Try the nodma kernel parameter when installing.
>>
>> (Hey - you asked right?)
>>
>> I've personally installed using an external hard drive before. So I can 
>> verify that works. I haven't tried the others but they're still 
>> available options on the boot CD so I have to assume they're still valid.
>>
> 
> Yes, well Id decided that the next try would be HardDisk (to the first machine)
> and then FTP to the rest, I was just wanted to put my complaint down on the
> list, and see if others were having the same problem.  Just seems like a 
> silly change.

It's more of a regression than a deliberate change. The backend of the 
installer has been completely rewritten to use yum, which is designed to 
try another mirror when there's a failure like this. In the installer, 
there is no other mirror to try, hence the fatal error. The backend 
change is also the reason why the FC5 installer is so much slower than 
the installers in previous releases. The benefits of the migration to 
the yum backend won't really be seen until FC6, when it should be 
possible to configure multiple repositories, e.g. updates, extras etc., 
at install time.

In the meantime, you could add a "me too" on this bug:
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=186145

And possibly these related bugs too:
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=188145
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=187656
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=186236

Paul.