Well the short version is that during my install of 12.1 using the "menu" option to choose packages, the install program sent me through the package selection process for each package family repeatedly.

What I was able to determine is that after going through all the menus and choosing the packages the first time, it happily went about installing those packages, but at some point in the process stopped and started me back at the beginning of choosing packages again. Not knowing what else to do, I went through the entire menu series again, and it seemed to pick up where it left off in the install. After it got through a few more package families it put me back to the beginning again, asking me to select the packages starting from the beginning ('A').

At this point I didn't have the patience to go through the whole thing again so I canceled out of that part of the install, hoping that maybe it had successfully installed and was just in an infinite loop. I had noticed where it was in the install when I did this, and it was before the X packages, so I completed the install, booted into my new install and tried to start X. Not found.

So I knew it had indeed stopped where it had appeared to. I booted from the DVD again and started up the install, this time only selecting the missing package families. Finished up, rebooted, and got into X just fine.

Not a big deal, but kind of frustrating and strange. Then when I tried to view a man page I found that the basic man viewer 'man' wasn't installed. I found the package on the DVD and installed it manually but it wouldn't run because the umm...troff or groff or nroff...something like that library wasn't found. I found that and installed it too and now I can view man pages.

Again not a big deal, but it got me wondering what else might be missing from my install. Those packages are part of the standard install, no? There's no way I would have deselected them during the install so it seems like that's an indication that my install is not complete.

So I'm thinking I should probably start over and reinstall, but the thought of having to go through those menus over and over isn't appealing. I suppose I could just do a full install. I didn't deselect many packages anyway.

I checked the MD5 on my .iso and it checks out fine. Beyond that I'm not sure what to suspect as the cause of the strange behavior I saw during the install.

There was one other problem during the install, I don't remember the exact message but I think it had to do with a package being skipped because it was corrupt or couldn't be verified, something like that. The package was just Python though, so I figured no big deal I can get that later.

It does have me wondering though, I used an old DVD-ROM drive I had lying around for the install since the PC in question is a bit older and only had a CD-ROM. I wonder if it was having problems reading the DVD. I don't see how that would cause the looping behavior I saw though.

I'd try reinstalling using a different medium but I don't think I have any blank CDs to use, and I didn't see anything in the BIOS that hinted at an ability to boot from a USB drive. I guess I could try a network install but I think that might be beyond my current abilities.

Any thoughts?

Welcome to LQ!

After checking the md5sum on the ISO image, you should
check the md5sum of the burned disc. It sounds like that
disc is corrupt.

And when you install, pick the package series to install or
eliminate. Such as here, I do not install E (Esmac), or KDEI
(KDE international), or Y (Games), or T (TeX) -- something
like that. You pick what you want, and remove the X from
the package series you don't want, then install.

If your disc md5sum does not match your ISO md5sum,
you've got a bad burn. If you can't Google your way to
checking that, post. I've only done it running Slackware.

With a script:
or without a script:

I'd first recomend checking the md5sum of your burnt install media there's alink for how to do that here

Then I'd definitely recommend a full install - it shouldn't take too long and you'll have everything at your disposal.



edit : Sorry - Bruce beat me too it ....

I'll add two cents worth. I ran into similar issues twice.

Once the problem was very much a flaky CD drive. After about five minutes the drive would stop reading correctly.

Another time the problem was a full hard drive partition.

Unless you are a veteran with GNU/Linux, the usual recommendation for new Slackers is to perform a full installation. That is, learn to pick and choose later. Probably good advice. All of us here at LQ were Slackware newbies at one time or another.

Thanks for the replies. I checked the MD5 on the burned DVD and it matches up to the .iso file, so the disc doesn't appear to be bad. Maybe the drive is flaky, I don't know. I guess I'll do a full reinstall and cross my fingers, hoping nothing gets left out.

I'd still like to know what happened to my install the first time around but I guess I never will.

Ok so I was really curious so I tried installing again using the same procedure as before - menu mode. I went through the process as before and this time it completed without any problems. No repeating the menus, no error on installing Python.

I'm at a bit of a loss to explain it, but my best guess is that the drive was acting up when I tried it yesterday.

Right now all looks good to me. X started no problems, man pages work, and the Z shell is already installed, which it wasn't last time either.

So I'm just going to presume it's a solid install and go from there. If I have any problems I'll probably swap in a different DVD-ROM and reinstall again.

Thanks again to everyone for their advice.

Hi,

You could test the memory on your system with memtest86. This could be a memory issue.

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