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

[Marko Vojinovic]

> > What shows on the other console (ctrl-alt-F2)?
>
> Never knew you could access another console on install.

Yup, you can even use the apps that are already installed. I heard from a 
friend (but not tried myself) that you can even watch a movie with mplayer 
during the install :-). But maybe that is a bit too much...

> 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%.

I had the exact same behavior on a similar machine (700MHz, 128MB RAM) doing a 
clean install. On a dozen various attempts, anaconda just hanged at random 
points --- during "starting install process", or during installation of this 
or that package (mostly somwhere in the middle of the install). No matter 
graphical or text installation, no matter the selection of packages. The 
install media passed the check. The symptoms are always the same --- top 
shows anaconda is working 99%, hd is idle, everything else is waiting. 
Memtest ran ok for several hours before...

It just may be the too low memory issue, but things got better when I replaced 
the cd drive with another. Then I was able to do a smooth clean install of 
minimal set of packages, boot the machine and yum everything else needed.

Btw, that "faulty" cd drive was afterwards completely functional and had no 
problem with it since (it's back in the box).

There are two possible explanations that I gave to myself:

1) Anaconda doesn't like to try hard to read the data off the cd. If it fails 
on the first try, it hangs, pretending to be working 99.something %.
2) Gremlins and power supply issues (I've seen it happen --- cd drive and cpu 
working simultaneously are too much for the power supply...).

However, I stress again that the install *did* work with 128 MB ram, being a 
clean install, having used the swap partition and on a minimum set of 
packages. Did after anaconda was satisfied with the performance of the cd 
drive, that is. :-)

Or maybe you should just try again and again and again until it works :-).

HTH, :-)
Marko

Marko Vojinovic
Institute of Physics
University of Belgrade
======================
e-mail: vmarko at phy.bg.ac.yu