Re: Long standing trouble installing x86_64

To be honest with you, I'd never expect one distro to be able to install over the
other, unless the new distro was based off of the old one quite recently with few
changes. Not all distros use the same location for files, nor the same method of
configuring things.. I'd expect it NOT to work as your case shows.

In an ideal world all distros would use the same package management, same file name,
same location, same everything.. but that is a long way away if ever.

The Mandriva "install" method should/would have worked if you would have told it to
format the partitions before installing the packages (the same as deleting the files
yourself).

The reason clearing the rpm database won't work is because the rpm system checks for
certain files in the system before/during/after installing rpms. So if you have Fedora
versions of files, the rpm system will see that and assume the necessary files are
there. This is where havoc will begin.. because those Fedora files are probably not
compatable with the ones Mandrake needs.

Try installing Fedora over Mandrake once without formatting.. I'd be interested to
know if that works.. I'm skeptical at most.

The only changes I'd recommend you make to Mandriva is ask for them to modify the
installer to delete all of the system files and configs if a person is requesting to
install Mandrive over some other distro.

Now I'm not trying to piss you off here or make you look bad, I'm just stating facts
and hopefully trying to clear up why you were seeing problems.


Nick



On Wed, June 15, 2005 13:32, Mark Davis said:
> Install or upgrade. Neither process works.
>
> Even blowing away the rpm database is not enough. I need to delete all
> of the system directories to ensure the software is installed
> correctly. Fedora uses hard links in places Mandriva expects symbolic
> links, and that difference chokes urpmi.
>
> ~md
>
> On 6/14/05, Nick Davis <[email protected]> wrote:
>> Let me ask a clarifying question here.. Are you saying you tried to use a
>> Mandrake/Mandriva install cd set and told it to "Upgrade" a Fedora Core 3
>> installation?
>>
>>
>> On Tue, June 14, 2005 22:40, Mark Davis said:
>> >
>> > The issue is that the Mandriva (nee Mandrake) installers cannot
>> > adequately deal with a previous Fedora Core 3 install on the target
>> > system. URPMI ends up in an infinite loop attempting to resolve
>> > dependancies. The breakthrough came after i had hand installed urpmi
>> > and was force feeding packages to the system. I got tired of screwing
>> > around with the old installed packages and wiped out the rpm database.
>> > This is when I noticed that urpmi was working through the packages
>> > much faster.
>>
>> > The stupid thing is that nobody could tell me this was the problem. We
>> > all blamed hardware, media, me... anything but the installer.
>>
>> > I don't know what the right answer is to solve this problem, but I am
>> > sure glad that I can move forward.
>> >
>> > The sad part is that I have wasted 16 solid hours on this with no
>> > installation support.
>> >
>> > Now that I have characterised the problem maybe it can be solved. I'm
>> > off to bitch at the support team :)
>> >
>> > On 6/14/05, Dave Ellis <[email protected]> wrote:
>> >> Mark Davis wrote:
>> >>
>> >> >I purchased a Pogolinux Altura64 workstation that came with Fedora
>> >> >Core. Being a longtime Mandrake user I thought that it woujld be
>> >> >trivial to get this system running with MDK.
>> >> >
>> >> >Sadly I have spent about 16 hours working on this system with both
>> >> >10.1 and 10.2 without getting past the same point.
>> >> >
>> >> >The installer program hangs at the point of "Looking for available packages".
>> >> >
>> >> >I have tried this with several combinations of the following parameters:
>> >> >text
>> >> >alt1
>> >> >alt0
>> >> >ide=nodma
>> >> >noapic
>> >> >nolapic
>> >> >noiopic
>> >> >acpi=off
>> >> >
>> >> >I know that it sees and can access both the cdrom and the SATA hard
>> >> >disk because a secondary boot partition has been formatted. Also I can
>> >> >boot in rescue mode and mount my old partitions.
>> >> >
>> >> >I would be open to doing a raw rpm install if that would work... I'm
>> >> >sick of Fedora
>> >> >
>> >> >~drdreff
>> >> >
>> >> >
>> >> >
>> >> This is likely going to seem like a very dumb question, but is your BIOS
>> >> running the most latest version?
>> >>
>> >>
>> >
>>
>>
>