From Bugzilla Helper: User-Agent: Mozilla/4.75 [en] (X11; U; Linux 2.4.0-6mdk i586) About half way through the installation I get the following message: The file /mnt/source/./RedHat/RPMS/db1-devel-1.85-5.i386.rpm cannot be opened, this is due to a missing file, a bad package or bad media. Press <return> to try again. Upon hitting the OK button, the same dialog pops up repeatedly. There is no way to get out of the dialog. I would expect that there would be a "skip file" button or at least a button to gracefully abort the installation. I believe that the reason that I am getting the missing file error is because of the method that I am using to install. I downloaded iso images for both disc1 and disc2 and stored them on an existing linux installation. I mounted each iso image through a loopback device and then NFS exported the mounted directories. I start the new RedHat installation on a different machine using bootnet.img floppy and choose an NFS install. I am guessing that the NFS install assumes that the entire distribution (contents of disc1 and disc2) are all on the same NFS share. When the installation gets to a file that is on disc2 it cannot find it on the NFS share and produces the error message that I described above. I may be the only person that installs this way, but in case I'm not... It would be a nifty feature if the installation could ask for the network location (NFS or otherwise) of each installation disk (if applicable) Reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: 1.Start an NFS install from a share that only contains the contents of disc1 2. Midway through the installation, the installer will complain that it is missing a file (the file is actually present on disc2). Actual Results: The error dialog box only contains an "OK" button to retry looking for the file. Each time the dialog is dismissed, it just reappears. There is no way to dismiss the dialog. Expected Results: In addition to a "retry" button, there should also be a "skip file" button which skip over a file if the installation can proceed without that file, and a "abort installation" button which gracefully quits the installer and reboots the machine.
There are critical files on the CD, and the install letting you skip those would result in a broken system.
I understand that certain files are critical and that the installation cannot proceed without them... and this is EXACTLY what the dialog box should say if that is the case, rather then asking indefinitely if you would like to try again. In addition, it would be nice if there was a button that would gracefully bring down the system, instead of requiring a hard reboot. I realize that in the case of a failed installation there isn't any real need for a graceful reboot, but nonetheless it prevents the user from feeling like the application has totally locked up and the only way to fix it is to hit the power button. I am surprised to find that a file critical to the install is located on the second disk. In the past, the second disk has been reserved for extra, non-required rpms. Has this changed with this latest version of RedHat? Finally, my suggestion about having the network setup ask for the location of both the first and second disk was not addressed at all. Should I file a separate feature request, or has it been deemed that not enough people are interested in having this as an installation option?
In any case, we're not going to have an install which could drop packages out. It will simply cause too many question -- if you really want that behavior, it's a simple patch ;-) For the "asking for multiple media", please file that as a separate request. We've talked about it in the past, but haven't decided what to do yet.