Force reinstall from ISO CD...?

jack_of_hearts · #1 26th February 2006, 08:15 PM

Hi all -

Fairly new at this (and it will become bleedingly obvious), so forgive me for some generalities.

Installed Fedora Core 4 a few weeks ago and am dual-booting using grub for XP or FC4, on an AMD Athlon64 machine

Been learning the ropes and poking around in a rather ignorant fashion trying to install software that I'm accustomed to using under XP (Blender3D, Yafray, etc.) So here's the problem - there were various rocky problems for me in getting the proper dependencies taken care of and I was rather irresponsible, testing out yum, rpm, yumex - AND - mixing/matching repositories.

What I have now is a set of packages and libraries that are working, yet I believe they are interfering with proper making and installation of software - my confidence in the integrity of my base installation is very low at this point and I would like to "start from scratch" much like one would do with Windows when one is so fed up with the mess that it just seems easier.

Questions:

1) is this a reasonable approach or is it severely flawed, and if so, why?

2) How does one go about this? Add/Remove Applications give me errors when I try to remove certain packages and components, saying that a large number of the libraries don't exist or can't be found.

3) Is there a simpler way that I am just plain ignorant of?

Been searching all around and I'm afraid that I don't yet know enough to know what the proper questions really are.

Any help would be greatly appreciated. I have a great deal of incentive to make this work as I can't stand XP and Fedora has really started to grow on me.

Thanks!

JOH

***bob*** · #2 26th February 2006, 09:08 PM

Jack, I think that reinstalling FC is something we've all done several times and THIS is your time! We all play with a new system and eventually break things, but when you're having multiple errors and repository conflicts, it's a good time to back up what's good and start fresh. You'll spend less time doing that than in trying to work through dependency issues. Pop in the install discs and get yourself a nice fresh FC, but this time, poke around in a custom install and check all those individual programs within the various groups and pick and choose which ones you really want.

jack_of_hearts · #3 26th February 2006, 09:16 PM

Thanks Justol'Bob -

So, by rebooting with the install cd's and doing an install, I won't wipe what is already there (images, working files, settings)? That would be like...

<sound of fainting, hitting the floor>

My worry was that by doing so I'd end up damaging what I've worked hard to set up so far... Will it be equivalent to the Windows process? Is it as simple as put them in and follow the nice software's instructions?

Again, thank you for your response - and so quickly, too.

JOH

***bob*** · #4 26th February 2006, 09:31 PM

Yes, you will destroy what's there! You've got to back up your important files onto DVD's, CD's, etc. You see, the info on the ISO's is now quite old and will conflict with installed programs, plus you have other conflict issues from using some 3rd. party repositories too.

What you might do for the future is to create a separate partition for your /home directory so that isn't damaged on fresh installs. Also, what I do to help ease the process is to do screen prints of the various menus so that I can make sure I reinstall all the same programs.

Guess the question is - can you reproduce what you've got easier than trying to overcome conflicts? Is everything working now and it's just a question of 'yum update' that's failing because of version differences between programs? Or, is this a melt-down and programs no longer work at all and can't be uninstalled and reinstalled?

***bob*** · #5 26th February 2006, 09:35 PM

Just re-read your initial post and see that you've got things working for the moment. Tell you what I'd do: Hang in for a couple of weeks until FC5 is released and then start fresh with the latest version, rather than reinstall FC4.

jack_of_hearts · #6 26th February 2006, 09:37 PM

Good questions! Things for me to ponder. My immediate response is, yes, I can back stuff up, and as far as the OS settings and program stuff... those will be MUCH easier this time around.

The separate partition... now that is something that would not have occurred to me at all. Makes very good sense.

Appreciate the info. Have a great day!

JOH

dhav · #7 27th February 2006, 10:09 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by jack_of_hearts

Good questions! Things for me to ponder. My immediate response is, yes, I can back stuff up, and as far as the OS settings and program stuff... those will be MUCH easier this time around.

The separate partition... now that is something that would not have occurred to me at all. Makes very good sense.

Appreciate the info. Have a great day!

JOH

I agree with bob, one of the best learning tools in linux is your ability to break stuff!

Reinstall it! Reinstall those aps! Do it a BUNCH of times, you'll not only learn how to do what you're already figured out better, you'll learn new things about linux and your aps as you go too...

good luck!

jack_of_hearts · #8 27th February 2006, 10:30 PM

Thanks guys -

Ok, yeah... things were broken all right. Really really. Should have done that a week ago rather than be a hard-headed mule about it.

Got really into the guts of what apps/packages were going into this install and felt like I understood it tons better this time around.

A strange thing happened however, and this might be best put on another thread, but when I got everything installed and did a yum update, everything went fine but then near the end where it was actually installing the 263 updates @ 810MB (approx) it got hung - as in "I'm not going to respond in any way whatsoever" hung. A quick look at the processes running showed it to be sleeping on the job and hardly anything else was using up cycles.

I had to re-do it and seemingly yum picked up where the previous attempt left off.

Bad thing happen there? Don't know... things seem to be ok. How would one know for sure and is this perhaps on the right thread after all if stuff is broken?

JOH

***bob*** · #9 27th February 2006, 10:51 PM

You could check the updates this way:
rpm -qa --last | tac
I've had yum die before and then restarted and completed without a problem. Pretty good system, actually.

jack_of_hearts · #10 2nd March 2006, 06:15 AM

Thanks guys!

Life is good.

Things are working, was able this time to get hardware to work correctly - DVD player for backups, sound... wifi is still up in the air - and a lot of my software is playing nice, too. Blender3D is good, and I'm still scratching my head a bit on Yafray, but it's the journey, not the destination, right?

My plan is to format an older drive I have and use that to store my "gotta keep" stuff like just ol'bob suggested - that shouldn't be too difficult, right? Don't answer that! I'll go look it up... then I should be ready to move up to FC5 with some amount of preparedness.

Take care -

JOH