I can help you at least with one of your problems :
To switch on another console during the installation, as it is a graphical
interface, you have to press ctrl+alt+F1 instead of just alt+F1
Elvis Chen wrote :
> greetings,
>
> I have finally decided to upgrade/install Mandrake 7 over my existing, and
> highly customized, mandrake 6.1. Unfortunally it didn't go well at all.
> First, I tried the "upgrade" option and had many programs not working.
> Even tcsh doesn't start at all because it isn't loading its default
> setting. The upgrade option also didn't remove the old rpms completely,
> thus wastes a lot of disk space.
>
> So I decided to do a fresh install. I downloaded the ISO image and burned
> it to a CD. However, not matter what install option I tried (from CD,
> boot from floppy and install from HD, normal/expert mode), I always ended
> up with the same problem. The problem is, right after the partition is
> formatted and it tries to determine what RPMs are available, the
> installation process halts with the following message:
>
> "An error occurred:
> Unable to open /mnt/var/lib/rpm/packages.rpm"
>
> After I press OK, another error message appears:
>
> "An error occurred:
> rebuilding of rpm database failed: failed to open
> /mnt/var/lib/rpm/packages.rpm"
>
>
> the normal alt-f1 trick doesn't work, so I can't go to the prompt to
> see what's going on. Is this a common problem? How to fix it? Did
> I get a bad ISO image (I downloaded it the 2nd day MDK 7 was
> announced).
>
> any help is very much appreciated,
>
> Elvis
