Description of problem: The Dependency Check phase of an install or upgrade, during which the screen displays "Checking dependencies in packages selected for installation", takes too long. On a 1.25GHz machine (PowerPC Apple Macintosh mini) with 512MB DDR RAM (and no swapping), it takes minutes for Base + Software Development (approx. 900 packages.) This is too long; it feels like the system is hung in an infinite loop, particularly because there is no visual feedback. If checking the dependencies cannot be sped up by a factor of 10, then please provide a progress bar. 900 packages in 50 character positions ==> 18 packages per character of progress. This is suitable to pacify an impatient installer. Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): anaconda-11.1.0.102-1 How reproducible: always Steps to Reproduce: 1. clean install; or, upgrade from FC5 to FC6Pre. 2. 3. Actual results: Dependency Check phase takes minutes with no feedback on progress. Expected results: Dependency check takes 20 seconds or less, else provides visual feedback on progress. Additional info: The algorithm must be to blame somehow: 900 packages * 10 dependencies (guesitmated average) per package / 200 seconds is only 45 dependencies checked per second; on a machine with more than 1 billion cycles per second.
I'll try to profile this at the office tomorrow and see if there's any obvious slow spots being hit. Unfortunately, given where we are in the cycle, if not, I don't know that there's much choice as to what to do :/
I thought it was frozen too. It must have taken at least 20 minutes to get to 1% dependency check on a Compaq Deskprop Pentium 3 733MHz. Over the years, I have installed many versions of Fedora Core and some of other distributions on slow hardware, and FC6 is the slowest yet. About 90 minutes later and I'm stuck on "Preparing transaction from installation source: 0%". :-/
I went back and measured carefully. The dependency check took 24 minutes. The "Preparing transaction from" took only 23 minutes (after I added ide=nodma). Now I stuck on "Package Installation." From 0 to 6 packages took 15 minutes, and after 1 hour 37 minutes (from 0 packages), I'm still on package 6/793. Anaconda is running at maximum CPU, but there is some free memory. (This is FC5->FC6 on a Pentium III 733MHz.)