From Bugzilla Helper: User-Agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 5.01; Windows NT 5.0) Description of problem: Trying to fix the boot problem caused by using up2date to update the kernel, I ran a new Custom installation to try to reinstall the original kernel. I made sure all package options were deselected on the main display so nothing would be installed except the kernel files. At the Disk Druid dialog, I had to recreate all the mount points (it would have been handy if the existing setup were brought in automatically). I chose to install LILO to the separate /boot partition (hde2) and to format only the /boot partition (so I wouldn't lose my existing setup). Without any type of notification, the installer copied 224Mb of files, only 25Mb of which were related to the kernel. This overwrote newer versions of several applications, including gcc and util-linux. Even worse, when I finally started Linux again (using a boot disk since my boot problem wasn't solved), Gnome didn't start automatically, leaving me with only a command prompt. (I'm still trying to figure out how to get Gnome back. I supect I've lost all my dialer settings, etc.) Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): How reproducible: Didn't try Steps to Reproduce: 1. Run Custom installation over an existing installation 2. 3. Actual Results: Installed files I had not selected, overwrote new apps with old versions and destroyed my setup. I suspect I'll have to completely reinstall Linux from scratch. Needless to say, between the up2date and anaconda problems, this is becoming a very frustrating experience. Expected Results: I expected it to simply format /boot and replace the kernel files. If it's going to install 200Mb of unasked-for files, there should at least be some warning so I could have stopped the process. Additional info:
Umm, you completely reinstalled your system from scratch. In other words, the partitions that you set mount points for in Disk Druid were formatted, erasing all data. The 225MB of data that you saw is the base install for Red Hat Linux...the smallest amount of packages that you can install and have a working Red Hat system. So you can't just install the kernel, because there's no bootloader, no system libraries, etc. This explains why GNOME and such disappeared. The installer is designed for three things. One is to perform a full installation on a system that does not have Red Hat Linux on it. Two is to upgrade an existing installation to a newer version. Three is a rescue mode that will allow you to try to manually rescue a system that has problems of some sort (partition table corruption, boot loader problems, etc.) I'm not aware of the problem that you orginally had with up2date, so I can't say exactly what went wrong there, but using the installer to repair that problem probably wasn't what you wanted to do. What you most likely wanted to do was to remove the kernel RPM that up2date installed and install the kernel RPM that shipped with 7.1. It is easiest to do that manually, rather than use the installer. At this point, I would say that your best bet is to reinstall the same way that you did the first time. I would report the bug you saw with up2date (perhaps you have already) so that it can be fixed.
Thank you for the additional information. Actually, since I unchecked the "Format" boxes for everything except /boot, my / (root), /home and /opt directories were still there. (Not any more, of course, since I just wiped my drive and started over so I could fix the up2date problem. Wasn't having any luck with tech support.) I did, btw, report the up2date problem, especially since I noticed I wasn't the only one who had the same problem. Anyway, I'd suggest re-opening this bug and classifying it as insufficient information being provided. Your clear description should be added to the information which is displayed in the left-hand panel of the installation screen.