I burned the ISO image for Redhat 6.1 and upgraded 7 RHLinux 6.0 machines without any problems. When I got to my machine, things went differently. While the dialog box (I used the graphical mode) saying Rebuilding RPM database was on the screen, the computer rebooted with no helpful error messages. The dialog was on the screen long enough before the reboot that it is hard to tell if the operation was completed. However, trying to install again would fail because the /mnt/sysimage/var/lib/rpmrebuild.22 existed. I could delete this file and get the same weird reboot. Actions tried: Rebuilding the database myself first. Upgrading to the RPM on the cd and rebuilding first. Using Text mode (this said: unexpectedly exiting and rebooted.) Using Expert Mode. Using the updated installer (This crashed during the sys/loader line.) What can I do? What is wrong with this one machine?
What installation method was this? FTP? HTTP? NFS?
As stated in the problem description, this was a CD ISO install. So, it's getting the data from the CD.
I am not able to replicate this in the test lab, but the one thing that I am thinking is this. Did you download the ISO image and burn that, or did you download the distribution and make a CDROM out of it. Also, if you did download the ISO, did you modify it in any way. The only time that I have seen a crash at this point in an upgrade is when the permissions on the CDROM are wrong.
Another question is that. Is /var a symbolic link on your system?? The installer is not able to follow absolute symbolic links, so if you have either /var or /tmp linked to somewhere else on the machine that you are having problems with, this could be the cause of your problem. Merely changing those links to relative links will solve the problem.
Here are my steps again: I logged into Redhat's FTP site and downloaded the ISO CD image. I burned the image and went around installing the CD on 7 different computers. When I got to my OWN computer, the upgrade died during the RPM database rebuild. So this CD had worked many times over, and continues to work on other machines. On my machine it does not. Some clues: Rebuilding the database myself does not leave any errors. The temporary files for rebuilding the database are still there after the sudden reboot. It looks like the rebuild failed with a signal, and the installer just quits out when that happens. /var and /etc are /tmp are NOT symlinks. In most other ways, this computer is exactly the same as the others. (Although I do more playing on this one.) Would you suggest mounting the CD and trying to rebuild the database from the on CD tools?