From Bugzilla Helper: User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 Galeon/1.2.7 (X11; Linux i686; U;) Gecko/20030131 Description of problem: What exactly do i think is a good idea? Perhaps having the ability to select a lessor compatible arch when installing on a machine...example being able to select i586 install when installing on an i686 machine...maybe a kernel boot parameter Why on earth would I think thats a good idea? The minimum memory requirement to do a a red hat linux install seems to me much higher than the minimum memory of using red hat linux for some dedicated purposes. I find when I'm installing on old hardware, for dedicated tasked machine, I can't actually install a minimal rhl9 install on that hardware. I have to install rh9 using a beefier machine then move the harddrive over. Normally that beefier machine is also a higher ix86 processor arch...so i end up having to downgrade things like the kernel rpm by hand before switching the harddrive back to the box its suppose to be on. Being able to select i586 when i'm installing on an athlon, would make it marginally easier for me to swap that harddrive back into the old box without issue. But I do grant you this is of small marginal benifit in my specific situation, so I won't be too hurt if its not worth the effort to implement. But maybe there are other situations where this type of install option fits. Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): How reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: N/A 1. 2. 3. Additional info:
Added in cvs. Add "rpmarch=i586" to your kernel command line (or similar). Note that this will allow you to completely shoot yourself in the foot if you do something like "rpmarch=sparc"
this function almost works in later versions. here is a patch for rhel4 that makes it work again: --- iutil.py 2002-12-16 16:52:35.000000000 -0800 +++ /home/updates/centos/4/dist/RHupdates/iutil.py 2005-04-22 17:00:13.000000000 -0700 @@ -661,11 +661,14 @@ f = open("/proc/cmdline", "r") buf = f.read() f.close() - args = buf.split(" ") + args = buf.split() for arg in args: if arg.startswith("rpmarch="): myarch = arg[8:] - + + # now make the current install believe it, too + rhpl.arch.canonArch = myarch + f = open("%s/etc/rpm/platform" %(root,), 'w+') f.write("%s-redhat-linux\n" %(myarch,)) f.close()
Red Hat apologizes that these issues have not been resolved yet. We do want to make sure that no important bugs slip through the cracks. Red Hat Linux 7.3 and Red Hat Linux 9 are no longer supported by Red Hat, Inc. They are maintained by the Fedora Legacy project (http://www.fedoralegacy.org/) for security updates only. If this is a security issue, please reassign to the 'Fedora Legacy' product in bugzilla. Please note that Legacy security update support for these products will stop on December 31st, 2006. If this is not a security issue, please check if this issue is still present in a current Fedora Core release. If so, please change the product and version to match, and check the box indicating that the requested information has been provided. If you are currently still running Red Hat Linux 7.3 or 9, please note that Fedora Legacy security update support for these products will stop on December 31st, 2006. You are strongly advised to upgrade to a current Fedora Core release or Red Hat Enterprise Linux or comparable. Some information on which option may be right for you is available at http://www.redhat.com/rhel/migrate/redhatlinux/. Any bug still open against Red Hat Linux 7.3 or 9 at the end of 2006 will be closed 'CANTFIX'. Again, if this bug still exists in a current release, or is a security issue, please change the product as necessary. We thank you for your help, and apologize again that we haven't handled these issues to this point.