Red Hat Bugzilla – Bug 74826
RFE: Tell user how many CDs will be required for installation
Last modified: 2007-04-18 12:46:59 EDT
From Bugzilla Helper: User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.1) Gecko/20020827 Description of problem: I'd only burned CD's 1 and 2 of the 3 CDs needed for RH 8.0 (it didn't help that the main UK mirror at ftp.mirror.ac.uk decided to trash ISO images for discs 3-5 on the morning of 1st October 2002, which explains my lack of disc 3). Imagine my horror when RH 8.0 asked for disc 3 to load ONE RPM (kde-i18n-British-3.0.3-1 - 4,484K long) simply because I'd selected British English as the language on a fairly standard "Workstation" install (which included the KDE Desktop). Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): How reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: 1. Install RH 8.0 from CD-ROM (normal install - e.g. Desktop or Workstation) 2. Select British English as the default language during the install 3. I additionally selected KDE Desktop as well as Gnome Desktop 4. Watch in horror as it asks for Disc 3 for a single RPM - arrgh ! 5. Re-install RH 8.0 again but this time leave the default language as US English 6. Sob as you see it only requires 2 CDs, not 3. Actual Results: Sure enough - an RPM less than 5MB is needed to complete the KDE install for British English language environments - the one and only RPM needed from Disc 3 for a typical desktop install. Expected Results: It really shouldn't ask for disc 3 for a single RPM for UK KDE users - that smacks of US-centric organisation of the CD-ROMs. Additional info: Slightly off-topic - if you get stuck at the end of the install with Anaconda asking for CD 3 and you don't have it, it seems impossible to break out of the "Please insert disc 3" prompt (escape or CTRL-ALT-Delete don't work and there's no Abort/Retry/ Cancel on the dialog - just "OK"). When you power cycle (yep, I had to do that !) after such a failed install, GRUB has been reconfigured and dumps you into a hostile GRUB prompt (i.e. stuff had been done to the bootloader, despite the full RPM set not being installed). I had to boot back off CD 1 and re-install the OS to get my multi-boot setup back - not good.
I'm changing this to a request for a message to the user telling them how many CDs will be required before starting the installation. That way you can opt out if you do not have them all.
*** Bug 74813 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
The calculation of which CDs will be required will be a nice enhancement, but it still doesn't address the original report I made - namely, it appears that only US English KDE users can get away with not needing a third CD when installing Red Hat 8.0. I suspect every other language needs a single RPM from Disc 3 - the appropriate i18n KDE RPM. It's possible the UK is the #2 country in the world (after the US) in terms of Red Hat users who have English as their first language, so I was hoping that us poor cousins over the Atlantic might get their KDE RPM for British English included on one of the first 2 discs (I can but dream...). BTW, as I speak, the one and only official UK mirror of Red Hat is basically down (and has had poor performance for months anyway, not just around RH release dates). Maybe it's time for RH to list at least a second UK mirror site (the US has about 40 official mirrors !) ?
Unfortunately, these packages aren't in the dependency chain (nothing requires them) and so the dependency ordering puts them last. Current code at tells you which CDs you need early.