From Bugzilla Helper: User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-GB; rv:1.0.1) Gecko/20020823 Netscape/7.0 Description of problem: When attempting to install from a local ftp server, the procedure fails at the stage of "Reading package information". It appears to be having problems either retrieving or processing file hdlist. Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): How reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: 1. Start install using two floppies 2. Select FTP method 3. Select partitions, bootleader, network, firewall, language, timezone etc. Actual Results: Install procedes correctly, until it reaches "Reading package information". The error message "Unable to read header list. This may be due to a missing file or bad media. Press <return> to try again." is shown. Accessing the alternate console via ALT-F3 shows the following error: moving (1) to step readcomps readheaders(): exception content-length getting content length File ftp://192.168.1.8/9/RedHat/base/hdlist not found. The last two lines appear five times. Expected Results: Install should complete Additional info: Installation started using two boot floppies created from bootdisk.img and drvnet.img, using FTP install option from local server. Note that the file does exist on the server. I have mediachecked the cdroms that were copied to the server and tried a fresh downloaded copy of hdlist, with the same result. The install has been tried to two client machines (a RH8.0 desktop and a Windows Laptop) with the same result. The ftp server is on Windows NT (IIS 4.0 FTP service). This has been used to host other installations (6.2->8.0) and has had no previous problem. The server does default to ascii mode, so I wonder if that may be the problem.
Please try the update image: http://people.redhat.com/~katzj/9-updates.img Write this out to a floppy using the 'dd' command the same way you would make a boot floppy. Then boot the installer with 'linux updates' and insert the floppy when prompted.
Many thanks, using the updates floppy resolves the problem.
I encountered exactly the same bug (see attached "anaconda.log" file) during installation of Red Hat Linux release 9 (Shrike) by FTP. Using the update image as advised in comment #1 resolved the problem for me too.
Created attachment 91209 [details] Anaconda.log of failed RH9 (Shrike) FTP installation
The changes in that update disk are applied in CVS and will be present in our next release.
Hi, I ran into exactly the same issue. Allthough i was perfectly able to get the file using wget (had to search for a device with sufficient space though because the file is about 9Mb.. So it is not related to the length of the ftp-path you type in in the beginning (because in my case it always came with a content-header- length exception.. and the path to my install ftp is kinda long..) just my 2 cents