Description of problem: Whilst doing an NFS installation, when I get to the ethernet interface selector screen, the dialogue box is *not* displayed, though it still accepts up/down to switch between eth0 and eth1, and F12 to advance to the next screen (nominating an NFS server). Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): Base FC5. How reproducible: 100%. Steps to Reproduce: 1. Find a machine with two ethernet cards. 2. Put in an FC5 install CD and boot. 3. start the installation, select normal graphical installation, "English", "UK keyboard layout" and "NFS install" and go to the next screen after each selection. Actual results: I then observe a screen with no dialogue box displayed, though the footer that specifies keyboard shortcuts is there. Pressing F12 will attempt to contact a DHCP server through eth0; pressing Down, F12 will attempt to contact a DHCP server through eth1. Expected results: There should be an ethernet interface selector dialogue box displayed in that screen. Additional info:
Does it show up if you hit ctrl-l? What type of machine is this on?
It was on warthog.cambridge.redhat.com (my desktop machine). This is an Athlon64 machine and the distribution being used was x86_64.
Pressing ctrl-l has no effect. I don't see any error messages in the logs on tty3 and tty4 when the ethernet pick screen is displayed (I do see a line appear in the log saying that it's going to bring up the screen).
This is likely a newt bug. What I believe is happening is that the string for the ethernet card is making the dialog too wide, so newt is unable to draw it on the screen. According to pnasrat, the string for one NIC on warthog is "eth0 - National Semiconductor Corporation DP83815 (MacPhyter) Ethernet Controller". With the padding, line drawing characters, etc. this puts us pretty far over 80 columns. I've seen this same behavior in firstboot, elsewhere in the loader under German and Italian, and system-config-securitylevel. See also bug 185950 for a description of a problem that sounds a whole lot like yours. *** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 185950 ***