Fatal Error (was: Newbie Needs Help with Kickstart Fedora Installations)

[Gary Ford]

Here are some additional details about the fatal error during a 
kickstart installation of Fedora Core 2 test 3:

When the installation fails, anaconda presents a dialog box containing:

"There was an error installing at-3.1.18-52. This can indicate media 
failure, lack of disk space, and/or hardware problems. This is a fatal 
error and your install will be aborted. Please verify your media and 
try your install again."

The last few lines on the F3 console are:

* moving (1) to step installpackages
* setting file_context_path to nil
* Initial install time estimate = 21.xxxxxxx

The F4 console shows a huge number of messages that begin with:

<3> audit(...): avc: denied {XXX} ...

where "XXX" is "gettattr" or "use" or "write" or "searc"h or several 
others.

If I perform a kickstart installation with a configuration file that is 
identical to the one causing the problems, but with "-at" in the 
packages section, the installation is successful. However, if I then 
(as root) try to install the at-3.1.18-52 package, I get well over 1000 
lines of messages; here are some examples:

/etc/security/selinux/file_contexts:  invalid context 
system_u:object_r:smbd_var_run_t on line number 1535
/etc/security/selinux/file_contexts:  invalid context 
system_u:object_r:nmbd_var_run_t on line number 1536
/etc/security/selinux/file_contexts:  invalid context 
system_u:object_r:samba_spool_t on line number 1537
/etc/security/selinux/file_contexts:  invalid context 
system_u:object_r:scannerdaemon_exec_t on line number 1539
/etc/security/selinux/file_contexts:  invalid context 
system_u:object_r:scannerdaemon_etc_t on line number 1540
/etc/security/selinux/file_contexts:  invalid context 
system_u:object_r:scannerdaemon_log_t on line number 1541
/etc/security/selinux/file_contexts:  invalid context 
system_u:object_r:screen_exec_t on line number 1543
/etc/security/selinux/file_contexts:  invalid context 
system_u:object_r:user_home_screen_t on line number 1544
/etc/security/selinux/file_contexts:  invalid context 
system_u:object_r:user_home_screen_t on line number 1545
/etc/security/selinux/file_contexts:  invalid context 
system_u:object_r:screen_dir_t on line number 1546
/etc/security/selinux/file_contexts:  invalid context 
system_u:object_r:screensaver_exec_t on line number 1549
/etc/security/selinux/file_contexts:  invalid context 
system_u:object_r:bin_t on line number 1550
/etc/security/selinux/file_contexts:  invalid context 
system_u:object_r:user_screensaver_rw_t on line number 1551
/etc/security/selinux/file_contexts:  invalid context 
system_u:object_r:user_screensaver_rw_t on line number 1552

The at-3.1.18 package seems to install despite these messages, based on 
the report from "rpm -qi at".

I'm not doing anything overt to enable or disable SELinux (I'm using 
whatever is the default). My selection of packages is about 2.2 GB, and 
I'm installing on a 12 GB partition. I've defragmented the disk on the 
HTTP server host and reloaded the files from the Fedora Core CDs. The 
CDs pass the media check, and an interactive installation does not 
object to the at-3.1.18 package.

I hope to solve this problem without getting the new Fedora Core iso 
images, because I live in an area with only two choices for Internet 
access: dialup at roughly 9600 baud, or two-way satellite connection 
with severe limitations on bandwidth once a download exceeds 150 MB. 
Each iso image requires >40 hours to download.

Any help would be appreciated. Thanks to Philip Rowlands for his very 
helpful previous comments.

Gary Ford
Plaid Flannel Software