Hi,
I, like many others, have had the problem of F7 dist on DVD not seeing the DVD drive when trying to upgrade.
There are a number of postings on the bug list, but thus far I haven't seen any solution.
Surely this is a particular kernel problem, and if so, could one download just those (newer) files needed to use with the rest of the dist. DVD to burn a new one and then get on with the upgrade.
There has to be a simpler way than downloading the whole 4GB or so, or waiting for a magazine to include an updated DVD.
If anyone has solved this problem along the above lines, please write up the recipe.

Cheers,

This is documented in the F7 Common installation problems, which points you to this bug.

Yes I am aware of the bug, but I am asking about a practical solution. I don't see any of that in the link you provided.
Cheers,

Do you have 4GB RAM? The bug report indicated that removing some allowed installation, after which it could be re-installed. If that's not your problem, you should add yourself to the CC: list on the bug, and provide your information.

I think it is. I know of at least one documented case of someone with this F7 DVD drive issue installing by an alternative method. After installation, the DVD drive worked normally. You should consider a Hard Drive, FTP, or HTTP installation of Fedora 7.

P.S.: A better idea than upgrading would be to do a fresh install of Fedora 7 separate from and alongside your existing version. Dual boot for while. See if the DVD thing works for you after installation. See if you even like Fedora 7. And what if you get halfway through an upgrade and something bad happens? You could end up with no system. I read posts about those tragedies all the time. Nothing can be done then. I always move up to new versions this way. In fact, Fedora 7 was so bad back in May that I had to go back to Fedora Core 6 for a while.

No, I don't have 4GB of RAM. I saw that story.
I think I have seen some comments that later kernels don't have the problem, but there doesn't seem to be a revised F7 distribution, and even if there was, I would think that the original distribution could be locally updated, if I new which files were needed.
I haven't tried updating (I currently use FC6) from an image on hard disc because I had seen that the basic problem of not seeing the DVD/CDROM drive persists.
Perhaps I just have to wait for F8. If that is the only practical solution it doesn't seem like very good support from the Fedora guys.

You can update your F7 installation DVD here. The Jigdo tool will use any rpms that you have locally (including the official installation DVD) to minimize downloads.

OK. I have a look at the Fedoraunity site and installed the jigdo tool, but I need to spend a bit more time figuring out the 'destructions'. The process to update an existing image already written to media (DVD) is a bit impenetrable at the moment. It might become clearer after a while!
It is certainly the sort of approach that I had been looking for and should be more well known.
Thanks for your help.

The process is straight-forward:

1. Insert the current DVD and mount it. For example, the i386 DVD will mount at "/media/Fedora 7 i386 DVD/". Create/change to a directory you'd like to keep the downloads in. This makes it easier to clean up when you're done.

2. Save the jigdo file at the web site, or just run:
3. Run jigdo-lite, telling it to scan the DVD for files to satisfy the requirements:
You will be prompted for the media you want. Enter a '6' to create a new DVD. That's it. When it completes processing, you'll have a new DVD ISO image ready to burn. If you don't want any other ISOs created, just ctrl-c to exit at the new media prompt.

I just ran this recently, and of the ~1700 files it needed, ~1100 were satisfied by the DVD. The rest were automatically downloaded from the Fedora mirrors.

Thanks for the explanation. I set it all going, but it is a pity that jigdo doesn't give an indication of the size of the download required. After about 7 hours I had to quit it having no idea of what was still to come and my monthly download limit seriously threatened.
Never mind, I now know how it works, and I may be in a better position to try again some other time. In the meantime I think I need to get a bit more familiar with what options jigdo provides.
Thanks again for your help, it appears to be a very smart way of updating a dist.
Cheers,