[ILUG] cant install bootloader

[kevin lyda]

ok, first.  i am a geek.

i spent two days downloading rh6.0.  to go quicker i hit multiple ftp
sites.  i checked progress with xargs and awk.

unwilling to install a redhat x.0 release on a machine i depend
on i installed it on a virtual machine.

it displays to the "console" slowly, so i just telnet to it and set
my DISPLAY...

now, peter's bootloader question.

Peter Flynn burst across the net:
>I just resurrected the laptop with a new 3.2 GB disk and started to
>reinstall RH5.2...everything goes fine until it tries to install
>the bootloader, which fails with no information, and won't go any
>further (obviously :-)

no, it fails with plenty of information, you're just not looking
in the right place.  redhat's install process uses virtual consoles.
alt-f2 will get you a shell (i used that to delete everything from
/usr/doc and other places to squeeze in my virtual install into 300megs).
alt-f[345] give result codes.

my redhat 6.0 install failed at the same point.  i did the following:

/mnt/bin/mount -o remount,rw /dev/root /  #this might not be needed.
/mnt/sbin/insmod -f /modules/loop.o
mv /bin/insmod /bin/insmod.old
cp /mnt/bin/true /bin/insmod

dunno if that will work for you - mine was failing because the loop.o
module had different version info then the kernel.  the insmod in
the install fs doesn't support the -f flag, so i used the
statically linked insmod in the installed tree.

as an aside redhat and caldera seem to be getting knocked for hiding
info from the user (not in peter's message, but in places like /., etc).
now i don't know about caldera, but redhat's quite opaque if you bother
to look.  the virtual console thing is mentioned in their docs (though
i found out about it because of a typo), and provides total control over
the install.  here ends the rant...

kevin