Red Hat Bugzilla – Bug 34299
Truncated stage2.img not detected during install
Last modified: 2007-04-18 12:32:29 EDT
Overall description: While installing from hard disk, the version of the stage2.img file I had downloaded was truncated at about 30M, instead of its true size of 89M. The installation appeared to proceed normally but, instead of doing the post-install, crashed without a clear diagnostic, saying finally "You may safely reboot your system". Someone leaving the machine unattended might think the instalation was OK>. Steps to reproduce: Attempt to install from hard disk with an incomplete stage2.img Actual results: Unpredictable, probably depends on actual length of downloaded stage2.img. No diagnostic message is given. See above, for one example. Expected results: Validation of the files in the base directory after selecting the directory where the RedHat files are, before installation gets under way. In a dual-boot machine with Windows as its default system, it would also be really nice to be able to validate the RedHat installation files from the Windows environment, before rebooting from the installation diskette. Perhaps the RPMS could be validated too.
I think it's asking a bit much of anaconda for it to 'validate' itself. If something went wrong in the download bad enough to truncate the stage2.img, there is a good chance that other files got corrupted too. We can't go through and verify that every single file has the correct md5sum. It's a good idea, but I think it just creates too much unnecessary overhead.