I cannot upgrade/install to Mandrake 9.0.

I haved installed Mandrake 8.2. When I tried to upgrade to mandrake 9.0 using the upgrade option during the installation setup the following error occured:

"no hdlist1.cz found".

I cannot resume from this error. The error occurs before the packages can be chosen. I used Standard security level, German/Austria keyboard layout, standard mouse and Expert/Update mode for the installation level.

In the logs on virtual screen 2 the following last lines occur:
"step 'choose Packages'"
"getFile Mandrake/base/hdlists"
"trying to read hdlists.cz for medium 1"
"getFile Mandraje/base/hdlist1.cz"
"warning: no hdlist1.cz found at /usr/bin/perl_install/pkgs.pm line 400, line 64


I tried the following also: I unmounted all my partitions
when the error occured (in the shell on the other virtual screen)
with:
umount /mnt/home
umount /mnt/usr
umount /mnt/mnt/windows
umount /mnt

then I pressed "ok" on the intial error message (no hdlist1.cz found)
and then I got the following error message:
"No hdlist nor synthesis to read for installation CD2 (x86) (cdrom2)"

However, all files (hdlist1-8.cz) are on the disk and readable.


My HW is a HP Omnibook 4100 Laptop. I boot with the installation CDROM1. I use Mandrake 9.0 standard edition which I bought from the shop (no download).


Thanks very much for any comments on this.

You have a corrupt CD 1 ISO, sorry.

the pathing:
"getFile Mandraje/base/hdlist1.cz"
should be:
"getFile Mandrake/base/hdlist1.cz"

Please download the ISO agian, and this time check the md5sum.

IF I knew you were in the US, I do have one copy spare of the download edition of that version that I could send within the continental US inexpensively enough to do one free to you. This set has been md5summed before burning and does install right..

John.

Sorry, but this was a typing mistake. "Mandrake" is the right path and it is correct on the CD. The image should be ok, I bought it in the shop.

Do you have any other suggestion?

Josef

PS: I live in Austria/Europe

Sorry, your CD is corrupt or you are using the wrong floppy boot image(the image called blank.img does hav an errata, see bottom of this message) to find things or you have hardware problems related to reading data-- you cannot use the reinstall floppy, and the hdlists on the CD are here:

/mnt/cdrom/Mandrake/base

It should NOT be looking on the HD for your own image sets unless someone altered the install routine or unless the HD would not take the copy of files-- if the machine runs otherwise, I think the CD 1 is bad as it needs to be in the CD-ROM to all the time until the installer asks for more and that is later. I did an update myself from 8.2 to 9.0, but I ended up with a bit of a mess that resulted in me backing up what I needed and then reloading 9.0 from scratch (but the update install program ran without errors).

Either the guy at the shop gave you a mess he made on a CD or your computer is having CD problems or the CD-ROM platter or drive reading laser lense is bad or dirty. I would talk with the shop, tell them they sold you something that gives the errors you told us, see what they offer to do.

The errata:

Error scenario: The blank.img-based installation does not work (An error occurred failed to get /lib/modules.cz...)
Why: The module-handling code had been changed between 8.2 and 9.0 and is no longer compatible with blank.img-based installs.
Solution: Download the patched blank.img and the special ISO (which contains only the installation program). The md5sum for the ISO is:

7845b7641192cd897bb4dc70df41a39f blank.iso

path to errata is here:

http://www.mandrakelinux.com/en/errata.php3

It is the only error of the general kind that you see that Mandrake has posted. the links to download are in the real errata, and the top of the page has instructions on how to apply patches.


John.

That doesn't make any difference. Either the CD is corrupt or your CD Reader is dirty/defective.

Yours would not be the first instance of a bad CD from a store.

I tried this installation image (blank.img) and the according *.iso which holds just the installation routine.

But the same error as in my original Post comes up.

I have no idea what to do now....

Well, this could have happened, but if it did I will eat my hat, well salted and peppered---

Did you change CDs before it told you to??? CD1 has to be in the drive at package selection time, then AFTER you select packages it will copy a bunch from CD1 and then ASK for Cd2, etc. In fact, when done with CD 1 it will eject it, then ask you for CD2, wait for you to stick a new CD in and press enter, check that CD, etc.

If that is not what happened I think there is a 70% chance you have hardware problems requiring at least a CD laser lense cleaning CD to fix. The other 30% is that you have a bad ISO 1 or the CD is physically dirty with fingerprints, etc.

John.

But how do you explain this:

1) I tried the installation with the internal CD-ROM (Boot from CD) => ERROR!
2) I tried the installtation with an extern al USB CD-ROM (of course with the usb.img boot disk which is already on the MDK 9 errata page) ==> ERROR!
3) I tried the installation on a different machine (Laptop, where never any linux was installed) ==> Success!

So the CDs seem to be ok, otherwise Number 3 above would not have been successful.

The second possibility you mentioned (Hardware error on the CD-ROM) sounds very unrealistic because:
- I had never problems reading CDs (with both readers)
- I can access the hdlist1.cz without any problem when I mount the CD under MDK 8.2
- When I do the unmounting procedure I mentioned in my original post in the shell during the installation, the installation program reads hdlist1.cz very well but fails to read hdlist2.cz.


So I guess the problem is realted to my current MDK 8.2 installation. Or do you still think this is a hardware or CD problem?

Thanks very much!

Well, that leaves two logical forks, and given that you HAVE linux, if you have space on your HD that is free and can make a partition just for the RPMS, you could in fact stick all the CDs worht of RPMs on HD, then do a HD install.

Basicly, one of three things must be true given what you say-- Internal CD-ROM drive has a dirty read lense, or CD2 of ISO set has gotten scratched or thumb or finger imprinted or dusty. See if you can read CD2 on your laptop now, especially the hdlist.cz file-- if not, is CD2 that is probably needing cleaning very carefully, if you can indeed read, is probably the CD-ROM internal to the desktop machine(and I would try cleaning it, the cleaning CDs will play in an audio CD player, frequently track two play will cause the cleaning to happen . You _can_ use an Audio CD player cleaning CD to clean a computer CD drive, this works-- i do this with my TDK burner, works well even in Mandrake using Kscd to play track 2, which happily plays the 30 second tone, when tone stops I know cleaning is done and the thing burns many less coasters that way and reads heaps(large amounts of stuff-- AKA much) better.

As to the USB failure, that is a different issue, but could relate to other problems that kernel devs are having implementing true USB 2.0 if the USB port is USB 2.0 or the external USB based drive itself is.

If things happened in 1-2-3 order, bet it is a dirty mech(drive read laser lense), if in other order bet is CD1 or CD2 thta is dirty or damaged or a CD inserted at wrong time and installer thought another CD was in drive bacause it had not asked for a change.

I use a Maxell multipurpose laser lense cleaning CD, works with DVDs and CDs, both in players and in computers. Not expensive, worth its weight in gold, like the floppy cleaning disks can be. I do not like it when my CDs have slight static charge, pick up tiny overloooked pieces of peanut skin, let them fall on laser lense in CD drive-- ditto dust, ditto chemical vapor from burning CDs, etc. So, about every month the cleaning CD gets stuck in for 30 seconds.

While I hate to say this, I think the problem is partly the CD Drive, indeed-- there are other causes for this kind of general problem, but given the specifics I think you have a dirty drive lense in the desktop CD-ROM drive. IF you had space on the HD in the desktop machine or had an extra HD with about 2 GIG not used that you could write all the RPMs to, you could do a HD install using the copied data as install source.

If you have a powerpack, one of the PDFs on the International and Docs CD is an installation advanced kind of guide. There is also one of these on Mandrake's sites, not the getting started guide but the install and usgae PDF has some troubleshooting that helps walk through the HD or Network install options-- in theory, you could read the data from the laptop's CD and install on desktop if you can get networking working from a floppy image between the two machines. That is another way to temporarily approach the problem sideways and walk around end of boulder imposed by problem rather than blowing boulder up or digging out of ground to eliminate boulder itself.

With limited knowldege, learn enough to sidestep a problem if can, and that frequently means creativity. So then, the approaches I am giving may solve problem or may help isolate down to one little issue for which there are easy or more complex but doable ways to sidestep.

Good luck, let me know what happens.

John.

John.

Well, I do not have the space to put all CDs on my HD.


The install program never asked me for CD2, so if you were right just CD1 could be broken. But this is unrealistic because whole installation works with the same CDs on a different machine.

The mounting of the CD with the installation program works well on USB. I can read all files perfectly well with the inbuilt shell provided by the installation program.

Things happen in any order. All three cases a discribed are valid and independent.

-- Thus I cannot believe I have a dirty CD (beause of Case 3, where I use exactly the same CDs).
-- I also cannot believe I have a dirty CD-ROM drive (because of Case 1 and Case 2, and also because I can read everything with both drives perfectly well (especially the hdlist1.cz, hdlist2.cz, ... which are all located on Install CD1).


Unfurtunately I have no other possibility to do installation (network, ...)

Your still think it is a bad CD or dirty CDROM?

Thanks very much!

IF you are using the same USB CD-ROM drive for both, and you can read directories but not get data from an older desktop reading the CD from the CD-ROM, then it could be that the reading directories is a thing where only the directory (TOC) entries are being read adn data flow is not working beyond that, except that the install program runs on both.

It IS possible to install from just the first two CDs, though you would be limited probably to basic installation choices. THEN, you could later install additional from CD3 as an update inside of the installed Mandrake.

Yes, it is either one of the two choices I said above in previous posts given what you have said unless you are using exactly one USB CD_ROM drive with both boxes you are trying to install and the thing could still have gotten dirty between installations, or the CD platter could have gotten dirty or fingrprinted or slightly scratched over the data area and give you exactly what is happening. That is why exact occurence order of what you did could be relevant, data on CD could be good, any clouding of surface can keep laser from reading the data right-- thus CD could act bad starting at any time in sequence that actually happened if laser lense or CD platter itself got dirty at all. I clean CDs using very soft terry cloth towel and clean water or CD cleaning fluid and CD cleaning wipes from radio shack followed by polishing gently with a very soft terry cloth towel.

Not only do I think could be, but the odds of it being anything other than those two things I talked at length about previously or one USB CD-ROM drive being used for both computers and one computer not using USB right (thus getting driectories only or possibly only things not in subdirectories read)are now so low as to be out of the picture.

In 33 years of working with computers bad input from media has been the culprit for many many problems versus machine incompatibilities or bad installers. Two causes-- bad data recorded (not true here), and bad input vectoring or damage to media(definitely).

In Mandrake's case, 9.0 is on thousands of boxes, and 5 errata were found after that (majors that kept things from installing).

I wish you luck, but am QUITE sure it is a CD, CD_ROM drive, cable, or USB issue if the same CD-ROM drive were used to install to both boxes(you did not say this one way or the other, and some older boxes simply cannot handle USB 2.0 flow rates and soem USB CD-ROMs do not feed data right at USB 1.0 rate which are much slower-- TOC gets fed slowest, so it would be likeliest to get transfered in a speed mismatch situation. If you have a spare CD-ROM drive you can mount internally in the computer, that may solve problem, and if not cleaning the CD might help-- LOTS.

John.

jdii1215 is full of it. Mandrake 9 cd's that i've used to install on several mahines, would not uprade my 8.2 box. I got the same error as you jrieder. Once I saved all crucial data off the 8.2 box, wiped it and did a fresh install = with the exact same cd's = with the exact same CD drive! All was smoothie smooth. It's obiously some bug both U and I have run into with the upgrade option on certain 8.2 box's.

Yep, it is hardware related-- I have done 10 with upgrades right, 4 that had to be reloaded. It happens on various hardware, P4 boxes frequently do well, adn that is what I have had most success on.

I have had some folks on AOLM update well, others had disasters.

As with ALL things linux, YMMV versus what any user says.

Your specific set of hardware and software determines success or failure, and that in detail is different in every box. Never think I mean something is universally true, though I might have a better track record because of what I typically work with insofar as hardware goes.

But that is for updating, not installing from scratch most often.

John.