On Thu, Mar 01, 2012 at 08:36:34PM +0000, n2xssvv.g02gfr12930 wrote:
On 01/03/12 18:44, Paul W. Frields wrote:
> On Thu, Mar 01, 2012 at 03:05:44PM +0000, n2xssvv.g02gfr12930 wrote:
>>
>> I have tried to do a network install of Fedora 16 multiple times, but it
>> has failed every time! More to the point I also discovered that the
>> anaconda install ignores changes I requested for the partition layout.
>> Excuse me for suggesting this, but Fedora 15 and 16 releases seem to be
>> the most troublesome releases ever, even exceeding the problems of the
>> transition to KDE 4. In fact I'm beginning to lose patience with Fedora
>> and will probably look at switching to another distro, so all
>> suggestions of an alternative stable KDE distribution are welcome.
>
> If you can describe exactly what you did, it would be easier to offer
> advice or help. For instance, a blow-by-blow of what you did at the
> partitioning screen would be useful.
>
Using the network install CD, (verified from hash)
Setting it to automatically partition and use a 1 Tb drive, changing the
GUI to be KDE rather than Gnome, it hangs after between 130 and 500
packages have been installed. It failed the same way when no changes to
the default packages were made. Numerous variations, including
simplifying the hardware to just motherboard, graphics card, memory,
HDD, and DVD RW made no difference! Even connecting directly to the ISP
modem made no difference. I doubt you can suggest something new.
You can often see error messages by switching to an alternate tty:
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Anaconda/Logging
Whether you can switch (using Ctrl+Alt+F2, F3, F4, etc.) may depend on
whether you're getting a really awful problem like a kernel panic --
which may indicate a hardware error particular to your setup -- or
just a network timeout of some sort.
Ctrl+Alt+F2 will give you tty2, a shell where you can look at the
current logs in /tmp. Similarly Ctrl+Alt+F3 (tty3) and Ctrl+Alt+F4
(tty4) will give you higher level messages which might indicate the
problem.
The fact that you're having difficulty with a number of different
methods makes me think it's more likely a hardware difficulty. Can
you verify your memory, storage, etc. are all fine using other OS
utilities?
Using the KDE spin CD, (verified by hash and does boot in vesa mode)
Installation completes, but then fails to finish configuring the HDD
causing the subsequent boot from grub to fail!.
Finally I have failed to burn an install DVD either on the PC or a
laptop, it also failing multiple times! Hence my attempts to update from
Fedora 14 appear to have been thwarted and I'm somewhat annoyed!!
After this much trouble I am becoming seriously disillusioned with Fedora!!!
Breaking news!!! I have a flaky Fedora 16 running on my PC, here's
roughly how:
Installed from KDE spin CD
Ran update from network install CD, (multiple times due to failures)
still cannot boot the latest kernel though, and it appears to crash far
more frequently than I'd expect. Bottom line is I'm still not going to
try updating my laptop from Fedora 14 until I see Fedora 16/17 become a
lot more stable!
Well, this is a step forward, but let's not rush to conclude this is a
general or widespread F16 stability problem. I've run both on my
hardware here with zero problems, as have many other people I know.
My whole family uses it daily on several computers and it's been solid
as a rock since the public release. A lot of dedicated, wonderful
folks put a ton of time into making sure that Fedora is as good as
possible before that happens.
Nevertheless, do think about reporting a complete bug if you can make
the same problem happen repeatedly. Start here for beginner
information, but if you're going to file a kernel bug, I *highly*
recommend you press on to read the more detailed information linked at
the end.
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/How_to_file_a_bug_report
--
Paul W. Frields
http://paul.frields.org/
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