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mandrake 9.1 installation: horrible experience


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I have installed mandrake 8.1, 8.2 and 9.0 on my machine in the past and the install has always happenned smoothly. I tested the 9.1rc1 and 9.1rc2 as well.

 

9.1rc1 installation

There was a problem during install (directly from ISO on hard drive) after configuring all services. It froze after I pressed the next button. I had to reboot and retry the install. The 2nd attempt worked fine. My guess is that the freeze had something to do with printer configuration (even though I had no printer connected to my desktop).

 

9.1rc2 installation

This one installed without a hitch.

 

9.1 final installation

This is my worst mandrake install experience. The install is from ISO on hard drive (md5sum already verified). It froze twice at exactly the same place, which is at the point of individual package selection. When I try to select individual packages, the mouse cursor starts flickering and soon entire X freezes. The only way out is to reboot which comes with the penalty that all the ext2/ext3 partitions (from my existing linux installs) are not unmounted properly. So after reboot these partitions have to be checked. This not only takes time but also has the risk of data loss.

 

So I decided to install mandrake-9.0 by the exact same method (install from ISO) on the same partitions and see if that goes fine. If mdk-9.0 install goes fine then I know there is something really bad about the mdk-9.1 installer. If mdk-9.0 install fails, then it may be a hardware problem.

 

As it turns out, I have smoothly installed mdk-9.0 on the same partition where mdk-9.1 install failed. I am now sure that the mdk-9.1 installer has some severe problems which need to be sorted out first. It appears that mandrake has hurriedly pushed something out without bothering to do quality control.

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heh, Mandrake 9.1 has been my best mandrake install YET better than 8.1 9.0 or 9.1 rc2 everything was up and working within minutes
If u can't reproduce a bug does not mean that the bug does not exist. A lot depends on how you did the install. Did u choose install and then go for individual package selection ?
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ndeb, this is bad....

 

I hope you can get around it by skipping the manual per package selection.

 

I'll be installing tonight as I just started downloading last evening.

 

And I sincerely hope the installation problems only occur for few people.

 

Let's hope you can fix your problems and that install and usage problems only happen to some unlucky few...

Mandrake does not need any such bad stuff for many people, they may not survive it..

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I certainly am a newbie, but I wonder if it could be related to the last minute security patch for e2fsprogs that ML came out with on 25 March MKDA-2003:003 ? It indicates 9.1 partioning is not compatible with older ML partitions. If you didn't reformat a 9.0 partition, I wonder if it might have mount problems under 9.1? :roll:

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I hope you can get around it by skipping the manual per package selection.
Thats defeats the very purpose of installation with individual package selection.

 

I certainly am a newbie, but I wonder if it could be related to the last minute security patch for e2fsprogs that ML came out with on 25 March MKDA-2003:003 ? It indicates 9.1 partioning is not compatible with older ML partitions. If you didn't reformat a 9.0 partition, I wonder if it might have mount problems under 9.1?
Thats not the problem, since I have already mentioned that I installed mdk-9.1rc1 and 9.1rc2 successfully.
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I have got to the bottom of this. Its a bug of the perl script installer. I will post more details later. And it also explains why I got a freeze when I had installed mdk-9.1rc1.

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I wonder if the mandrake installer generates any kind of install log so that problems can be found?
It does. When u r doing a graphical install, the display appears in ctrl-alt-f7. If u press the keys:

ctrl-alt-f1 - a log screen showing various commands executed by the installer

ctrl-alt-f2 - a root shell where you can run useful shell commands like df, top, ps, kill.

ctrl-alt-f3 - this screen shows some other info about the installation

ctrl-alt-f4 - shows the kernel log

....

ctrl-alt-f6

So there is a lot of info which is useful to expert developers and users. Coming to your question, a log may not help much since the problem is in the very script which creates the log. The perl script is taking up almost 100% CPU, a case of infinite loop caused by bad programming.

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heh, Mandrake 9.1 has been my best mandrake install YET better than 8.1 9.0 or 9.1 rc2 :) everything was up and working within minutes

 

Same here. It's running great!

 

:D

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