Description of problem: When trying to install a second linux bootable system, Anaconda uses about 1 hour to go through "Preparing to install", while sending the following command to console: rpmdb: Basenames: unexpected file type or format. After this, it just hangs Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): How reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: 1.Install Linux with an extra partition for a new / 2.After installation change label on / 3.Reboot to attempt new installation on your other / Actual Results: Goes through all steps as normal, until you get to installing packages. After that, it take a lot longer time to format your new /, then it starts "preparing to install". At this point, it took about an hour on a CD installation. While this is going on, you can track the error message on virtual console 1, or it will be desplayed on screen in ftp. It's reproducable with CDROM, ftp and nfs. After the initial hour, it just goes silent, nothing happens Expected Results: It should have installed the packages on its root partition. Additional info: This is on RHL 7.2, the gold version. My computer is an IBM Thinkpad 600E, PII 400MHz, 192MB, swap 400M, 20G disk. I have set it up with sharing /boot and /var. The second install should have everything installed on its / (ie. no /usr, /home etc.)
So the first install went ok?
Yes, the first install has no problems. I have reinstalled it several times, and the first installation always works fine. It is the second install that doesn't work.
It sounds like the installer is getting confused by the change in partition labels. Why was it necessary to change the partition label anyway? It seems like you could just do a second install with the remaining space on your hard drive. Is this machine in the building and could I watch you duplicate it to get a better idea of what steps you took?
Will try as soon as I have time (ie. next week). And sorry, I'm in England, but feel free to pop by. I also thought about the fact that I tried to install it on /dev/hda8, probably around 12-14 Gb into the disk. However, it should be using /boot (/dev/hda1), so that is within the cylinder limit.
Grub may allow you to get around the boot cylinder limitation. It depends on the motherboard.
Any more info here?
I attempted a reinstall this weekend, and for some reason, it succeeded. I left the label to itself (/1, I thought it was /2), and decided _not_ to reinstall /boot, as I had a lot of stuff in there now. I also decided to let them share /var. It got to the "prepare to install", that took about 15 minutes to go through, although no activity on the disk nor on the CD. Then it started the installation, it took about an hour, compared to an equal installation earlier taking about 20 minutes. In the end, I got a working system. The only difference is that my /dev/hda2 was no longer empty, but contained Windows, although the second Linux installation was done on /dev/hda8. Could it really be that the label was different?
I don't know...it's hard to say without having the machine to experiment with. Do you want me to close this report since things seem to be working now?
Feel free to close this. I will not have time to investigate further for another 2 weeks, if I for some reason find out what is wrong, I will let you know.
Ok. Thanks for your report.