From Bugzilla Helper: User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.0.2) Gecko/20021120 Netscape/7.01 Description of problem: Bug #112898 reported this problem in Fedora 1 and claims it's fixed in later versions, but here is the same problem in Fedora 3. I downloaded the DVD ISO, I ran the installer including the disk check, and after the first 80 packages it started spewing "rpmdb: PANIC: fatal region error detected; run recovery" for every package. Following the advice in Bug #112898, I also tried "linux allowcddma" and the result was the same. Incidentally, I had the same problem in Fedora 2 also, but there I was able to get around it by selecing no packages and using rpm to install them all after booting. But the minimum install always includes some packages, and these caused the problem again in Fedora 3. Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): fedora core 3 How reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: 1. run installation disk 2. 3. Additional info:
Created attachment 107523 [details] gzipped anacdump.txt
Created attachment 107524 [details] install.log
Created attachment 107525 [details] install.log.syslog
For FC3, does the install.log always show the problems happening after openssl-0.9.7a-40.i686, or does the first problematic package change each time? It might help to know what kind of hardware you have.
Whatever packages I select from the list, or even if I select no packages at all, the first 80 installed packages are the same, and the 80th one is the openssl package where the error occurs. My hardware is an IBM Netvista A60. The manuals don't give any information about the internal components, but at bootup it says it has a 1.7GHz Intel Pentium 4, Phoenix Bios 4.0 Release 6.0 version P9KT23AUS, 256MB of 400MHz Rambus RAM, and a 256KB cache. I also replaced the hard disk with a Seagate ST360020A 60GB 5400RPM UltraATA, and the CD-ROM drive with a Sony DRU-540A. The monitor is a Sony CPD-G400. My current attempts involve trying to minimize the number of intiial packages to get something installed so I can run rpm separately on the additional packages. I'm doing this by using a network install and linking unnecessary packages to the vim-minimal package. I still haven't succeeded in getting a minimal set that installs without errors and that boots successfully afterwards. But in my latest attempt the rpmdb error occurs after the up2date package, and if I remove that one it will occur somewhere else again, so the problem is in rpm and not in the packages. Does anaconda even use rpm, or does it use its own internal version? Is there a way to get it to rebuild the database itself whenever the error occurs and try again instead of just panicking? I have the list of packages I want, from another computer where Fedora 3 installs successfully, so I'm trying to find a way to install them manually onto the IBM machine.
Oh, it also has an Adaptec AHA-2940 SCSI card.
> Is there a way to get it to rebuild the database itself whenever the > error occurs and try again instead of just panicking? Whenever I've seen an RPM database get this corrupted this quickly (albeit on an already-installed system, not from within anaconda), rebuilding the database has always left me with a database missing at least half of the packages, probably more. (But each of those cases has been bad hardware, too, and not quite as reproducible as your case.) Has any Red Hat Linux, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, or Fedora Core distribution ever installed onto this particular computer without hitting this error? If you have a Windows XP install CD around, does *that* manage to install or does it explode (e.g. die with a bluescreen early on, etc.)? Anyway, if you want to get your system up-and-running quickly, you could try using a Knoppix CD on the problematic computer to do something like this: 1. Partition the drive 2. Use tar & ssh (or dump & ssh) to copy the working computer's files over to the problematic computer 3. Edit /etc/grub.conf and /etc/fstab as appropriate [also, change those paths to account for the fact that you're booted off the Knoppix CD -- or chroot to the copied FC3 installation and edit from there] 4. chroot into the FC3 installation if you haven't already, and run grub-install there 5. Boot into the installed system and let kudzu reconfigure things as needed but that's just a quick hack and doesn't get to the root of the problem... One last suggestion, if you have the time: Does installing FC2 then upgrading to FC3 *using yum instead of anaconda* work? For instance, try these instructions: http://www.linux.duke.edu/~skvidal/misc/fc2-fc3-update-with-yum.txt
Red Hat Linux 6.1, 7.1, and 7.2 installed and ran fully (for 3.5 years) without even once having an rpmdb error (or any other kind of Linux system error). Fedora 2 installs the minimum if you select no optional packages, and then rpm works fine at installing the remaining packages after booting. But Fedora 1 and Fedora 3 don't. I've also been running Windows NT on that machine for 3.5 years without any problems unique to that machine. Thanks for the yum suggestion: I'll try it.
I just saw this on RHEL4 beta 2 (nahant). Will attach the logs I could find and see if it's reproducible.
Created attachment 108904 [details] tarball with anaconda.log install.log syslog install.log.syslog anaconda-ks.cfg
Everything above sounds like my problem. The same problem is discused in bug #139146 and is not resolved yet.
*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 139146 ***