Nightmare install of FC3T3 for me!

[rkl]

I think I've already written off Fedora Core 3 Test 3 on my PC, so I can't give any sort of detailed list of changes compared to FC3T2 really. Here's the horrible things that happened to me:

* I burned the (binary-only...grr...) DVD ISO of FC3T3 OK (md5sum OK, media check OK) and booted into it fine. Nice to see XFCE added to anaconda. They still install *and run* "cups" even if you deselected "Printer Support" (cups should NOT be on my system if I turn off printer support - this has been a problem ever since cups took over from LPRng).

* Installation goes fine with no errors and I reboot - bang, it won't go beyond "Starting Grub" - disk light stays on for 30 secs, goes out and it's a power cycle to do anything else.

* Boot into "linux rescue" mode and try to re-install the grub loader on the FC3T3 partition (note: no errors from grub here either when I do it) and I reboot. Same hang as before...grr...

* Back into "linux rescue", install grub loader onto my FC2 partition, reboot and - voila - I've at least got a bootable machine again. Hack grub.conf for FC3T3's kernel, reboot and I'm finally into FC3T3.

* Firstboot comes up and my mouse pointer disappears. Keyboard nav sort of works (how do you expand the tree triangle in the list of monitors? Couldn't find an obvious one for that!) and when firstboot finishes, the mouse magically reappears and works again. Still can't config beyond 800x600, which is extremely maddening.

* OK, into disgustingly chunky 800x600 mode now. Copy over my FC2 xorg.conf (with Nvidia 3D driver config), init 3, run Nvidia installer (6111), init 5 - nope, X won't start - apparently, the Nvidia kernel module won't init. Give up on that and back to 800x600 again.

* No Firefox installed?! Yes, it's on the DVD, so have to rpm install that. No Web browser icon at all?! Well, just added Firefox's. At this point, 800x600 is too horrible for me to continue and I give up (who can work at that res?!). It's a test release and I've got a limited amount of time I'm willing to spend faffing around some serious problems.

Conclusion - FC3T2 worked pretty well perfectly on my machine, FCT3 certainly did not. I think it's back to FC2 and wait for FC3 final...

[Emily]

wow, that sounds bad.. but you can expand the triangly thing in the tree widget with the spacebar in GTK (for the monitor list)

[superbnerd]

Wait a second! You do know that fc3t3 is a test release, right? The whole point of using a test release is not to use the lastet software, but to test the software. Your case might not be unique, so it would benefit fedora and the community if you stick with the test release and file a bug report and maybe solve the problem so it doesn't happen in fc3 stable.

If everyone finds problems in a test release and gets mad, despite the warnings during install, and stops using it without filing a report the problems will never get fixed. I implore you to 1) give us more details about your setup (pc specs, partition setup, etc) so we can fix the problem, or 2) file this in the bugzilla, but please give them details as well.

Thanks for testing fedora.

[pdxplm]

That's very interesting, I burned the DVD this morning 10/13 and have found:

1. Everything is there that should be KDE 3.3, GNOME 2.8, Evolution 2.0, Mozilla 1.7
2. I booted and am running KDE/GNOME without any issues
3. I'm doing all the updates out there, that is the killer, it's just taking time
4. Am very impressed with the difference in speed and memory usage compared to FC2

I'm running on an IBM Intellistation 2gh, 512megs, NVIDIA TNT, 20 GIG HD. This is my "test" system, so I didn't expect much, I'm pleasantly suprised though.

[Picomp314]

pdxplm: you actually notice a difference between FC2 and FC3T3 as far as speed?
is it in launching applications, using applications, or what?

[pdxplm]

The IBM I'm using was sluggish, and in using gkrellm to monitor CPU/Memory, I found that having the same services runing I was down to about 230 megs free mem in FC2 and in FC3T3 I had about 290.

Applications, startup, shutdown, all seemed more responsive.

I still run into the same issue with the sound card where I have to go to KDE, enable it and run Kmix, but after that, Gnome sound and quality are great.

[pdxplm]

Sorry, in the memory free, that should be about 230 free in FC2 and about 390 free in FC3T3...

[rkl]

Wait a second! You do know that fc3t3 is a test release, right? The whole point of using a test release is not to use the lastest software, but to test the software.
Obviously, I was intending to test the software out since it's on my smallest partition and will be wiped off when FC3 final comes out. However, the abject failure of FC3T3 on my system was very surprising, because I've installed every Fedora test and final release there's ever been on that partition without any problems at all.

I will probably have one more go at installing FC3T3 - maybe I'll clear out my FC1 partition (which I've been meaning to do for ages) and install it in that partition instead, just to rule out any sort of hard disk issues (which is, possibly, what caused this and why I'm seeing a mess and no-one else is).

Still, the disappearance of my mouse pointer during firstboot was a novel experience - I was somewhat bemused by that (oh and, yes, I tried space bar to expand the tree list of monitors and no luck with that)...

[superbnerd]

You disaapearing mouse trick does sound exotic. You may be able to rerun the firstboot service and see if it happens again.

The inability to set the resolution any higher happens from time to time on some fc2 setups. I think it has something to do with nvidia extentions.

The firefox not installing is also strange. Are you sure you selected it during the install? I noticed installing from dvd seems to cause all sorts of extra problems (so its good your testing it).

Your certainly did have a buggy install.