installation problems 4308

I've made a little more progress. (1) I've tried a few times more to install from the RH7.1 boot disk and CDs. I'd been going through the list of packages to install and write down all their names as they go by. I'm about halfway through the list, since I only spend an hour or so on each install attempt and only once a day. One time I went through the whole list, without writing it all down, but hitting F2 on every single package. These activities are giving me some pbuttive knowledge of the packages and what they do. I'm loathe to write down the information provided by F2 for every single package, so I'd like to know some command I can issue which will cause all of that information to be placed in a file. I don't mean that this should be done during the install. Instead, I would like to examine the CDs on another PC and tell it to get that information, which is evidently somewhere on the CDs. (2) I managed to at least get a list of packages: very simply, I mounted each CD on another PC and executed, e.g., By grepping the list for the packages that the install said it couldn't find, I discovered that they are indeed on the CDs and copied one of them to a directory on the other computer. I don't know how to examine the rpm file and decide whether there is anything wrong with it. The error message from the install said that a particular file (different ones for different installs, since I made different choices) couldn't be installed due to missing file, bad package or bad media. I've now determined, at least for this particular package, that the file is not missing. So, that leaves bad package or bad media. How do I check for a bad package? What does "bad media" mean and how do I check for it? Is it conceivable that there could be some kind of virus infecting the CDROM drive? (3) I figured out how to deal with the various .img files I found on the installation CDs. Some of them, in spite of their names, are actually gzipped. For example, this was the case for hdstg1.img. I changed its name to hdstg1.img.gz and then gunzipped it to get a new file which I'll call hstdg1.img.bis to distinguish it from the original file hdstg1.img, which the file command describes as: Linux rev 1.0 ext2 filesystem data Some of the other .img files were already Linux rev 1.0 ext2 filesystems. To see what was inside hdstg1.img I had root create the filemnt-loop and executed mount hdstg1.img.bismnt-loop -o loop which made it possible to look into the filesystem contained in hdstg1.img.bis by looking atmnt-loop. Eventually, I looked at all the .img files on the first installation CD in this way. I found some copies of anaconda and anaconda.real. These seem to be the actual installation scripts, but I'm not entirely sure about this since I don't speak python. It would be nice if there were a document that explains in words of one syllable of a human language exactly what this script does. (4) Having access to these scripts raises the possibility that I can modify anaconda.real or anaconda in order to make the boot process more convenient from the point of view of the experiments I'm conducting on my disabled PC. More precisely, I would copy the entire contents of the CD to a directory on another PC, modify the installation scripts in it, and then burn the resulting directory to another CD and thereby make my own installation CD. One change I am particularly interested in trying out is to modify the install so that it does not install any of the optional packages that come with the RedHat distribution. If I want to achieve that with the present installation CD and boot disk, what I have to do is go through the entire list of optional packages, one by one, and reject them all. It is easier, in principle, to just modify the installation CD. Unfortunately, I don't know exactly what changes to make to the anaconda files (if that is what has to be changed). Does anyone know? (5) Regarding the information provided by the F2 key: I didn't see anything on the installation CDs and the various .img files that seemed to contain that information. Exactly where is it? -- Ignorantly, * Disclaimer: I am a guest and *not* a member of the MIT CSAIL. My actions and * comments do not reflect in any way on MIT. Also, I am nowhere near Boston.