Now that I can successfully post to the list, here is the account of my
installation problems from last weekend.
Greetings,
I am currently running Mandrake 6.0, and it works pretty good.
I've been interested in upgrading to 6.1, and ran into a bunch of
difficulties with that. I'd like to do an upgrade instead of a clean
install.
I've got a cable modem, and decided to try a network install.
Searching about the mandrake sight, I was disappointed by the lack of
information explaining how to go about upgrading. There was plenty of
info about doing a fresh install. I was also disappointed by lack of
info about downloading the necessary files. For example, do I jsut get
a bunch of rpms and rpm them, or is there more to it? (Note - If this
sort of information is available on the mandrake page, please let me
know). My description of the events that follows represents what I've
learned as I've learned it through the installation process. I was kind
of shooting in the dark at first.
I connected to one of the FTP sights listed on the mandrake page,
and found the 6.1 directory, and from there found the RPMS directory, which
I downloaded. I was a bit skeptical of just rpming these newly-download
rpms, so I poked around a bit at redhat's webpage. Here I found info stating
that one should use the installer program even to do an upgrade. So I
downloaded a boot image, and ran the installer (for a HD/CDROM install).
However, it didn't find my mandrake directory tree. I wasn't sure waht
else I needed.
I then downloaded via FTP the instimage and base directories, and
their recursive subdirectories and links. Here is my first question :
what is the preferred method for downloading recursive directories, and also
using links for file transfer? FTP choked at some of these, and I had
to manually go in and make the links, which was a real pain in the butt.
Anyway, the installer finally was able to see the directory tree,
and went and loaded the ramdisk, and then searched for my installed
RPMs, but then gave me the error "RPM Database Does Not Exist". I'm not
sure if that's word for word, but that's essentially the error I got.
I checked, and I do have my RPM directory under the mandrake
tree, what does this error mean? Any other information would be heartily
useful. For example, is it referring to the primary RPM logs for the system
not existing, or is it this rpm directory that it cannot find??
Then i tried doing a net install, and used the netboot.img
(or is that bootnet.img? i forget). This worked fine, and I was able
to connect to the FTp site. However, this program choked, at a different
point. It asked if I have SCSI devices, which i say no. then it
downloads base/hdlists, which is a quite big file and takes awhile. then
it asks again if I have SCSI devices, which I say no again. then it
downloads base/hdlists again, and finally prints the error message that
thhe device is busy. Which device is this talking about? my hard disk?
I've tried this net installation various times, and keep getting the same
error messages.
Basically, I'm getting frustrated. i spent about 10 hours attempting
this install on saturday, and I was pretty let down by the lack of information
on mandrake's webpage. Again, if this info is there, please let me know
where, and if not, I strongly suggest including it somewhere. As an aside,
I'm finding that there is lots of linux help for newbies, and lots of
help for expert folks, but for the intermediates it seems there is a large
void.
Anyway, I'd like to upgrade to 6.1, and I'd like to figure out how
to do this without using a CDROM each time. If anyone can shed light on
these error messages, please let me and any other clueless wannabe 6.1ers
know. :-)
Thanks alot!
- wass
