Re: [Rule-list] Failed Miniconda Install

[Michael Fratoni]

On Saturday 05 October 2002 11:41 am, Arthur Yarwood wrote:
> I've been trying to install Redhat 7.3 using your Miniconda installer
> (version 0.7.4). However I'm getting this error when booting up the
> installer:
> running /sbin/loader
> install exited abnormally -- received signal 11
> sending termination signals...done
> sending kill signals...done
> disabling swap...
> unmounting filesystems...
> /proc done
> /dev/pts done
> you may safely reboot your system

Hi Arthur,
To get to the brief answer first, this is an issue I don't really have an 
answer for. I haven't had time to look into why it happens, to be honest. 
It seems to affect older hardware, and as you saw, it happens with the 
stock installer as well. I have a PII-200 here that does the same thing. 
It's been reported repeatedly on the Red Hat mailing lists, and I have 
yet to see a reply that explains it. Red Hat does not support an install 
on this hardware, so this just isn't an issue for them. For us, it's a 
show stopper of course. However, hope isn't lost, keep reading. ;)

> This is the same error I was getting when I tried Redhat's own
> installer. I'm guessed this was due to my lack of ram (only got
> 32Megs). Although could Miniconda also be running out of ram? Or is
> this likely to be some other conflict?

Often, a sig 11 during install can be traced back to a bad memory module, 
this may or may not be the case. You could try running memtest86 on the 
machine, just to be sure. The web site is here:
http://www.memtest86.com/

> My system is an old ICL desktop, 486DX2 50Mhz, 32Meg fpm ram, Seagate
> 1gig HD, which splits itself in two to get around the 500meg ide limit.
> ICL ethernet card; supported using the eth16i.o module on the
> drvnet.img disk. I'll need to install across an nfs too.

While it isn't as polished as the miniconda install, the slinky installer 
may work for you. Slinky is a shell script that will prompt you for 
answers about how to install, and then do so. Slinky can do NFS, HTTP, 
FTP, hard disk, and CDROM installs. It will get you a basic text mode 
system running, and isn't overly difficult to use. If you want to try 
that, and have specific questions, I'll do what I can to help. 32M of ram 
should be enough for either installer, though Miniconda will be slow. 
Slinky will actually work in as little as 8M without too much of a 
performance hit.

> I have had stock Redhat 7.0 running ok on this machine. I was wanting
> to update it though to run CUPS, which has nice drivers for my new
> laser printer. I intend to use the machine as a print server you see.

Slinky isn't set up for updates, it wants to format one or more partitions 
and start fresh. If you have any data you need to save, either back it 
up, or don't use slinky. Just as a word of warning, I have not tested the 
upgrade path with Miniconda. While none of the RULE modifications should 
affect an upgrade, I wouldn't bet any useful data on it. Please make sure 
you have a known good backup before attempting to upgrade a working 
system.

I've begun working on new versions of both installers for the 8.0 release. 
I've also been trying to rebuild the miniconda installer for 7.2 and 7.3 
but I had run out of both time and disk space. ;) The disk space problem 
has been solved, and my devel machine is back in working order again, so 
perhaps I'll make some progress on this soon.

Hope that helps,
-- 
-Michael

pgp key:  http://www.tuxfan.homeip.net:8080/gpgkey.txt
Red Hat Linux 7.{2,3} in 8M of RAM: http://www.rule-project.org/
--