Fedora follies

[Lonni J Friedman]

On Sun, Oct 5, 2008 at 6:00 PM, David A. Bandel <david.bandel at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Sun, Oct 5, 2008 at 11:52 AM, Lonni J Friedman <netllama at gmail.com> wrote:
>> On Sun, Oct 5, 2008 at 5:41 AM, David A. Bandel <david.bandel at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>> Now, anyone got pointers on how to do a network install of Fedora over
>>> the Internet (i.e., a network install without having to download the
>>> entire Fedora DVD?).  Kinda defeats the purpose of a network install.
>>
>> You most definitely do *NOT* have to download the entire Fedora DVD
>> just to perform a network install.  All that you need is the
>> netinstall CD (115MB):
>> http://mirrors.kernel.org/fedora/releases/9/Fedora/x86_64/iso/Fedora-9-x86_64-netinst.iso
>>
>> While 115MB might be a lot larger than what Debian is using, in the
>> grand scheme of things, its not that big.
>
> It's almost exactly the same size as the Debian netinst.iso.  But what
> do I point it at?  And where?  All the install told me is it couldn't
> find the metadata (repomd.xml) and in text mode even if I wanted to I
> couldn't edit its location.  OTOH, I have no idea where repomd.xml is.

You point it at any Fedora mirror of your chosing (including one that
you've locally mirrored).

>
> What I found in google:  about 20 entries that said to fix the problem
> do: yum update (or some such).  Doesn't really tell me what to tell
> the installer even if I could edit the location.
>
> BTW, the FC9 netinst.iso had a file minstg2.bin and the text installer
> errored out looking for stage2.bin.  Moving the minstg2.bin to
> stage2.bin on my web server solved that part of the problem.

Something is very broken somewhere.  I use the netinst kernel & initrd
for Fedora9 kickstart installs every day, without any such hackery.

>
> All the above lead me to believe no one does a net install.  That, or
> the bugs only show up for me (I doubt that very much).

I can't tell what's going on with your environment.  All I know is
that I have no install problems when booting off the netinst kernel &
initrd.

-- 
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
L. Friedman                                    netllama at gmail.com
LlamaLand                       https://netllama.linux-sxs.org