Description of problem: Bad media passes scan and partly installs RH8.1 Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): beta-3 How reproducible: I could send you some CDs if you want Steps to Reproduce: 1.I wrote 2 sets of phoebe beta-3 and made a boot floppy. 2.after installing most of the rpms on disk 1, the install failed, saying it could not install ethtool, possibly because the cd was bad. 3.The system would start with the new kernel, but the CD would not mount to finish installation of RPMS. Actual results: Expected results: Additional info: Here is my diary, maybe you can see what went wrong, I can't. Except that the CDROM scan at the beginning of the install does no good. When the install starts, it offers to verify your media. I made 2 sets of disks, all DID verify. The install began, and it was doing the upgrade, installing packages, and the upgrade died with the error saying it could not install the package "ethtool" and that may be a sign that the disk is bad. So I started the system and it did start and it had already upgraded the kernel, grub.conf, glibc, and a few other things. Inside the session, I was able to mount the CDROM and then use rpm to upgrade the rest of the files on the disk. ethtool installed fine. Other RPMs installed fine. So then I reasoned that it was just a fluke, or somehow my cdrom malfunctioned, so I started the RH8.1 install again. This time, the installer did not find any cd at all. It kept asking me to put a disk in, and when I put in either of the copies, it did not find it. It did not find any CD in the drive, not either one. Interesting, yes? I booted from the RH boot.img floppy and started in "linux rescue" mode. I was able to mount the cd and install some more RPMS. OK. So then I restarted the system again, let the new kernel start, and then I can't mount the CDROM. The error message sometimes was the one saying "Too many mounted file systems or invalid block device" and sometimes it just said "no medium". So I conclude that the CD's I made are all bad, or that my CDROM is somehow damaging them, scratching them?
If you look at bug 75008 I've made some comments on what is going on. To summarize - the mediacheck reads the CD sequentially and does a big checksum. During an install the packages on the CD are not accessed sequentially, and I believe this causes CDs to fail during the install that passed mediacheck. I plan on making the mediacheck more strenuous a test to try and catch these marginal CDs as well. If you look on VC4 when you get an error (hit CNTL-ALT-F4, use CNTL-ALT-F7 to go back to the GUI screen) look for any IDE/ATAPI errors. This will help you understand if its a read error.
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