From Bugzilla Helper: User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-GB; rv:1.7.8) Gecko/20050511 Firefox/1.0.4 Description of problem: Installer usually gets as far disk partitioning or even package installation but always crashes with no oppertunity to change screen to pick up logs. I have got an anaconda dump from when it fails gracefully. Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): How reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: 1.Install from DVD using linux +any combination of options from above text 2.Manual partitioning using ddruid select an exisiting partition for root (format) 3.select custom/everything 4.Hold your breath till failure Actual Results: Some form of kernel panic garbage on screen sometimes sometimes jsut a complete halt Expected Results: Completed install sucessfully Additional info: Hardware Asus K8V-E Deluxe Athlon64 3500+ Ati Radeon X600 All-in-Wonder 80Gb IDE HD -Installation Target (hda) 200Gb SATA HD - Doesn't seem to matter if this is installed or not Panasonic DVD+-RW(DL) installation source (hdd) Some cheap unknown CD-R (hdc) Which I have used to install core2 to in the past Have seen posts about partition table problems and tried to do an identical install after a failure but it doesn't seem to work tried installer with ide=nodma barrier=no noresume apm=no noacpi nofb still no joy. Installer fails with a white screen just after starting X if I try the Graphical installer every time. Text installer seems to be much more random about where it fails. Did manage an install once but X wouldn't start, never managed it again even following same procedure.
Created attachment 120005 [details] Anaconda Crash dump
There are errors reading your CD in the log. Please verify your media according to the instructions at http://rhlinux.redhat.com/anaconda/mediacheck.html.
Can there be any other cause? The media check passes every time I try the install. Is it possible to have such a minor error that won't get picked up in the check but that virtually guarantees a failed install?
OK trying another install without typing garbage in the first boot prompt gave me (appologies for the terseness but it doesn't stay on screen long) /dev/hda2 VFS unable to mount ... unsupported optional features (04) immediately after choosing linux text as install option. Next selecting the same paritioning scheme but with a the format option gives me a "bad page state at prep_new_page (in process mke2fs, page ffff...I presume the rest is meaningless) trying to fix it up, but a reboot is required. It tries to continue but doesn't install any packages and looks pretty hung to me. I did get another install to start installing packages and left it running over night. It kernel paniced again and all there was in the install.log was DB4 errors. Do you want me to try and get that far again and post the install.log? Is there any way of capturing console output from the installer into a file as I'm guessing the meaningfull bit of any stack trace is near the beginning which scrolls off the screen to quick for me to get?
OK I don't think this is an anaconda bug. I think I have a hardware problem. Managed to get enough Windows on it to flash the BIOS and things are a little better in that I can nearly always complete an installation. The install will not boot afterwards with a kernel panic at some point before I log in. It appears to be hard disk related as it is usually when trying to mount the filesystem with CRC errors or fstab claimed to be corrupt. (Booting to rescue the fstab looks fine?) Running Memtest86 for now, but I'm not convinced.