🚀 go-pugleaf

BrisBiker (gaz@bluesky.net.au) wrote:
: In article <52kucv$gee@inferno.mpx.com.au>, BrisBiker says...
: >
: >In article <52hpos$a1r@student.anu.edu.au>, David Gibson says...
: >>
: >>BrisBiker (gaz@bluesky.net.au) wrote:
: >>: [snipped - unable to mount red hat install diskettes]
: >>
: >>        Having a look at the install script it looks like the floppies
: >>aren't in any filesystem. The install appears to read data direct from
: >>/dev/fd0. Unfortunately, I don't know Perl, so I can't say exactly what
: >>custom format they are in. At a guess I'd say a small magic header, then raw
: >>RPM data.
: >
: >Browsing the DISK?.IMG files in hex suggests that this is the case.
: >
: >Which leads me back to the original question: where are the *.rpm files I 
: need 
: >to post-install packages that I didn't include in the original install? They 
: >certainly aren't in /var/lib/rpm...

: Quoting from the RedHat FAQ:

:   3.9.  How do I run the install program again?

:   Reboot your machine using the three disks that you made for the
:   installation.  You will most likely need to completely reinstall your
:   system.

:   If you just want to reconfigure networking or install more packages,
:   try using the control-panel tools.

: For a while I thought 'the control-panel tools' referred to the fullscreen 
: panels during installation - but I can't make head nor tail of the perl 
: scripts which drive them.

: Perhaps it refers to an X admin utility - now there's a fine catch-22 - I need 
: X to do partial installs, but I can't do partial installs because I don't have 
: X.
	It does. But it's just a front end to the 'rpm' command line program
utility. Using glint (that's the X package gadget) won't fix the fundamental
problem that you need the rpm files to install them. This seems a fundamental
problem with floppy installs. If you install by NFS/hard disk/cdrom, you have
all the rpms on the NFS server/hard disk/cdrom and you can just rpm -i them.
I guess to cut down on the no. of floppies though, Red Hat have decided to not
use a filing system, and just splat the data onto the disks pretty much raw,
with no method other than their install script to extract it. Not very sensible
really.

: There is also the 'lim' and 'rpp-install' utilities referred to in the RedHat 
: mailing-list archives. But they're not on my system.
	I beleive these are just for handling RPPs the obsolete package type
used with RedHat 1.

: Apologies for following up myself. Unless someone has something to advance 
: this thread, it might as well end here. Along with my use of RedHat. Pity, it 
: looks very professional.
	'Tis a pity rather. I've found red hat to be pretty good. I find
RPMs to be a very nice way of handling packages (using rpm not glint). They
seem to have screwed up with floppy installs fairly thoroughly. My guess is
it was added as a bit of an afterthought, presuming most people will use
cdroms / FTP / NFS (as I did). I wonder if it's any better in the next
version.

--
David Gibson @ The Lorax	| New from Microsoft...
david%brucehall20@anu.edu.au	| 	THNEED 95
				| Which everyone, Everyone, EVERYONE needs.