I recently performed from Gnome a Launch up2date upgrade. During this process, around 100 packages were upgraded.

I now have things that are not working and have no clue what to do.

1). Certain applications that require a password will not run, like Add/Remove Applications and System Logs. These apps ask for the admin password - if I enter it incorrectly, it responds correctly that I have entered an incorrect password. If I enter the correct password the password box disappears and the application does not start.

2). In terminal mode, I receive "Illegal instruction" replies to some commands. Yum does this for example. There are others, like running "system-config-packages"

3). In my Gnome taskbar, the Launch up2date Icon does not appear.

4). When I reboot the machine, the Gnome Destop comes up OK but the smaller overall lay window that usually disappears, does not disappear.

There other other odd items as well.

You have reached the point where a fresh FC3 reinstallation makes a lot of sense.

Looking at your old posts, it looks like you have been working with Synaptic/apt. The downside of apt for upgrades is that it can remove useful packages if you always say “yes” to the upgrade question. Never, never, never, never let apt remove a package, unless you know a very good reason for doing so, like when upgrading from FC2 to FC3.

I recently had apt remove gdm (you know, the Gnome login) from a system. If you have your apt upgrade logs, you can go back with apt and/or yum and try reinstalling the removed packages, but it would probably be faster to just reinstall FC3.

Is there a way to reinstall FC3 but not from CD or DVD (via internet or hard drive)?
If yes, can you direct me to instructions on this? (There is a reason that I want to avoid using CD's.)
Also, if I do this reinstall will my data files on the drive be preserved? The machine is running FC3 only - it is not a dual boot machine.
(Currently FC 3 is 'running' on the machine - I am using Firefox for example to post this reply, and my Apache/Gallery website is working.)

From your reply I gather that I should possibly shy away from using apt - what should I use in your opinion?
(And can I use what you would recommend, coupled with Synaptic?)

Thanks.

There are several non-CD options for installing FC that you can invoke by booting from the CD and entering “linux askmethod” at the prompt.

The one I use a lot is the NFS install, because you can put the Anaconda installer update in the same folder as the CD iso’s and it will be used during the installation. Hard disk and various network options are also available. These are fairly well documented in the RHEL4 "Red Hat Enterprise Linux Installation Guide for the x86, Itanium and AMD64 Architectures" (see http://www.redhat.com/docs/manuals/enterprise/).

If you do not reformat the partition containing your personal files, they will still be there after the update, but doing a backup beforehand would be a good idea. I have mixed experiences with reinstalling over a messed up copy of FC and prefer to wipe the partitions before reinstalling FC.

Your current situation is why a lot of people create a /home partition for their personal files. You would just leave /home untouched and reformat the other partitions. Another option would be to boot using a self-booting, live-CD version of linux like Knoppix (see http://www.knopper.net/knoppix/index-en.html), mount the partition(s) and delete everything but your personal files. If you have never used Knoppix, it is a real eye opener.

Regarding apt, I really like apt as an installer and strongly encourage people to try it, but it does have a dark side, which is the removal of perfectly good packages during some “apt-get -f install ...” and during “apt-get -f dist-upgrade” calls. When used in the “apt-get upgrade” format, apt is fairly safe to use, but may not update everything on your system.

Unless I know of a good reason to allow apt to remove packages, I switch to yum to install any packages that apt has the removal issue with. For a fresh installation, I let “apt-get upgrade” do the initial work and then let “yum update” upgrade anything that is left over.

You have given me a lot to read and I am plowing through it.

My Gnome System Monitor shows the following Devices:
1).
Name: /dev/sda1
Directory: /boot
Type: ext3
Total: 98.7 MB

2).
Name: none
Directory: /dev/shm
Type: tmpfs
Total: 759 MB

3).
Name: /dev/mapper/VolGroup00-LogVol00
Directory: /
Type: etx3
Total: 45.2 GB

Based on the above, does it look like I could do a hard disk install? And I assume I just put the ISO files in the 3rd directory listed above? Or am I out of luck?

ps - I will backup my data as you mention.

ps - I guess I was wishing for the magic "Repair Fedora" button!

In theory, it should work, but I don’t know whether the Anaconda installer has a problem with LVMs using the "linux askmethod" hard disk approach.

The best way to find out is to copy the iso’s to the partition and then try to start the installation process (i.e., “linux askmethod”). If the installer can see the iso’s, then you are good to go. BTW, you can abort the installation and do it at a convenient time.

You can always fall back on the ftp method, but that may be a bit slow.