[NBLUG/talk] Fedora Install help

[Walter Coole]

I tried again with Fedora 8 with an identical result.

There was apparently some confusion, this is a fresh install, it just 
happens to be on a systems that previously had FC6 installed on it.  The 
selection that is offered on the initial screen is "Update or Install on 
an Existing System", so that's the one I used (I've tried several 
others, but none seem to work any better).

I'm not allergic to other distros, but since I'm not particularly 
up-to-speed on virtualization, it seemed best to stick with something 
for which I have credible step-by-step instructions.  Fedora bundles Xen 
into the distro, which is one of the ways I've tried to get this 
running.  I have a fair amount of experience with Red Hat variants and I 
was able to get FC6 a lot closer to working (Dom0 was up and I got 
several virts running, but not running anything I wanted), but if 
someone is willing to help me out, I'd be tickled to learn a new distro.

I wasn't completely certain I had a 64-bit host, but Knoppix reports the 
lm flag in /proc/cpuinfo; also, when I tried the install disk on my 
laptop, it said Hey dummy, I need a 64-bit CPU or something equally 
unambiguous, so I'm fairly confident that the host is suitable in that 
regard.
> I have to agree with Dave on this one.  Backup the data and start fresh, if 
> you can do it on FC you can do it on CentOS.. which is a hell of alot more 
> stable.  Just because the HowTo was for FC doesn't make it impossible on 
> CentOS.
>
> Fedora has been a nightmare to upgrade on my Thinkpad T60p for the last few 
> releases.  In fact I just upgraded my Thinkpad today from FC6 to FC9 and it 
> was a bitch, with a capital B.  I couldn't even get FC7 or FC8 installers to 
> run on this sucker when they came out.  I lost faith after the FC3 release of 
> Fedora.
>
> If you want to take a peek next time you are waiting on your failed install 
> hit the CTRL ALT F4 and CTRL ALT F3, cycle through some of those virtual 
> terms and see what's going on, I get tired after 2 minutes... 16 hours?  You 
> are patient.
>
> If you are thinking of running Xen I would probably point you to CentOS.  I 
> use it for my production virtualization environment and it is rock solid.
>
> If you want to bleed now and continue to bleed for the foreseable future keep 
> using Fedora.  I like to bleed a little now and again but I have lost alot of 
> blood over the years and frankly I get a little tired of it now.
>
> As Dave said you are installing this on a x86_64 hardware right?
>
> On Friday May 23 2008, Dave Sisley wrote:
>   
>> Walter Coole wrote:
>>     
>>> Would anyone know what I'm doing wrong with a Fedora 7 install?
>>>
>>> The current symptom is that I select "Install or Update an existing
>>> System", the screen blanks and the message at the top says "LOADING";
>>> I'm fairly patient, but after 16hrs of no change, I'm thinking it's
>>> stuck.
>>>       
>> I concur!  16 hours seems a tad much.
>>
>> I'm not sure I can really help, but did you actually select one of:
>> Install OR Upgrade? or did it get stuck before you selected one or the
>> other?  If you selected Upgrade, what was it that you were upgrading
>> from?  I have very limited (and unpleasant) experience from the couple
>> of times I tried upgrading.  Those attempts were with Pre-Fedora 7
>> versions.  I now tend to backup the data I'll need and do a fresh install.
>>
>> Another dumb question - you do have an x86_64 machine, right?  I've
>> gotten that confused myself.
>>
>>     
>>> This is a DVD I burnt from the x86_64 iso from the UC Davis mirror.  The
>>> SHA was OK and the disk passes the FC6 media check, so I don't think
>>> it's a simple data error.  I'm thinking of downloading the Fedora 8
>>> image, but my DSL is doing a fine impression of a tree sloth, so in the
>>> meantime, I'm hoping someone less clueless than I can give me some
>>> guidance.
>>>
>>> Maybe I should go to the next InstallFest, but I'm kind of vague about
>>> when that might be.
>>>       
>> As Installfest coordinator, I can tell you we were hoping to have one at
>> the end of the semester at SSU, but the scheduling did not work out.
>> It's possible we will have one some time during the summer, or at the
>> beginning of the next school calendar.
>>
>>     
>>> In case anyone's interested, my end goal is virtualization: a couple of
>>> Fedora hosts and a couple of Windoze hosts running on a single hardware
>>> box.  My current approach is Xen, with Fedora 7 as the host OS, but
>>> given my repeated failures, I'm open to other approaches.
>>>       
>
>