Description of problem: Using redhat-config-packages to install GNOME after a custom installation requires a lot of disc-juggling between discs 1 and 2. It would be nice if redhat-config-packages would be able to first install the packages off one cd, then off the other. (This only works if you fix the bug in redhat-config-packages to prevent it from always breaking because it looks for RPMs in a non-existing directory.) Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): How reproducible: Easily: Install Fedora Core 1 with a custom install where you don;t have GNOME selected. Login as root, startx, fix the redhat-config-packages CD directory bug by changing a RedHat/RPMS in methods.py into Fedora/RPMS, run redhat-config-packages, select GNOME, and juggle discs like fat boy slim.
This would require the use of a temporary package cache as far as I can tell, here's why... Say you want to install foo-1.2 which depends on bar-3.0 and baz-0.96, and baz-0.96 itself depends on quux-1.0.2 baz-0.96 is on CD 2, the rest are on CD 1 RPM cannot install baz until quux has been installed, because it cannot tell whether merely _installing_ baz would require quux (e.g. for a script to be run). So it asks for CD1 to install quux-1.0.2, and perhaps installs bar-3.0 but it can't install foo-1.2 yet because it needs baz-0.9 which is on CD2. So now it asks for CD2, then installs baz-0.96. Finally it can install foo, but it needs CD1 back to do so. You can imagine that this is much worse when the number of packages increases. The best way to resolve this is with a cache of RPM files on local storage, perhaps in /var/somewhere. Then redhat-config-packages can see whether packages are needed from more than one CD, and if so copy them to /var/somewhere one CD at a time, then install the whole lot in its preferred order. However that increases the disk space requirement for a new package install when using redhat-config-packages. So it would probably have to be optional. This increases the complexity yet again.
The same problem exists on FC3 -- install without GNOME development, then add it later -- 30 packages are selected, and require swapping of disks 1, 2 and 3 a total of 14 times! Nick> The best way to resolve this is with a cache of RPM ... The problem here is that the packages are scattered over CDs without apparent consideration of interdependencies (how is package placement on CDs decided now?) If packages were split over CDs such that packages on CD1 depend only on other packages on CD1; packages on CD2 depend only on other packages on CD{1,2}; etc. then all packages could be installed in a single pass.
Also, Nick> However that increases the disk space requirement ... That's true, but if there is 7 GBytes of free space in /var/tmp and you are installing 50 MBytes worth of packages, surely they can be cashed?
Maybe it's just me but why can Anaconda install from one disk and then the next and the next in order without juggling? Seems to me that a little code from Anaconda simply needs inserted in redhat-config-packages. And why would a cache of the packages on the disk take any more space? You need space to have them installed in the first place. As the individual packages get installed they would get deleted from the cache taking so little extra space for such a short time that if you have any reasonable amount of free space on your partitions, it shouldn't be a problem. Also, get the DVD version of FC if you can. Correct me if I'm wrong but last I heard that version doesn't have this problem.
This report is filed against a product which is no longer supported. It is very likely that the problem is resolved in the current version of Fedora Core or scheduled to be resolved with the new system-config-packages scheduled to land in Fedora Core 5.