Weird Package Installing
 

Did anyone notice the weird package installing method. I had to change between CDs 1,2,3 and back between 1 and 2 like 50 times....

I've heard that the way Fedora "knows" which package is on which disc is a bit hacky. There isn't clean way to do it automatically.

Please file a report in bugzilla, though. The developers do try to ensure that disc swapping is minimal.

On a clean install of Fedora Core 2, or Core 3 I custom install the 6 FULL following categories only:

1. X Window System
2. Gnome
3. KDE

4. Administration Tools
5. System Tools
6. Printing Support

(select ALL options within each).

After rebooting and seeing my Fedora Core 2 (or 3) is perfectly working order, then I start Adding more applications - like Editors, Multimedia, Office, Development stuff. I have noticed this pattern of for-ever switching/swapping CDs:

It starts off with CDs 1,2,1,2,1,2,1,2,1,2,1,2,1,2,1,2,3,2,3,2,3,2,3,2,3,2,3,1,3,1,3,1,3,1,2,1,3,1,3,2,3,2,3,1,2,1,2,12,1,2 1

don't worry, I kept at this most annoying CD swaping business.. and it does eventually finish.

Fedora Bugzilla is down. Please can someone make sure this weird annoying bug gets posted/known to Fedora.

Thanks

This behaviour with Add/Remove Applications is at least partly caused by dependencies - it may need a package from disc 2 before it can install a package from disc 1.

Add/Remove Applications isn't the best way to add large quantities of packages, though.

The best solution is to copy all of the packages on the discs into a directory either on the box itself, or on a network server, make that a yum repository, and use yum to install software. Yum will handle the dependency checking, and you won't have to swap discs.

At some point Add/Remove Applications will take yum repositories as a source, but at the moment it can only use discs, so it really sucks for power users.

Someone needs to notify the FC dev team!!!

You might get a WONTFIX, or WTF :-)

Disc swapping during installation should be minimal (which is what I originally thought that you meant). There isn't a real advantage to deferring installing lots of stuff until after the main installation. Disc swapping with large arbitrary sets of packages is always going to happen to some extent; unless you put all the packages on a single DVD or network share...

But all previous versions of Red Hat didn't have this weird erratic CD switching problem. Red Hat intelligently queued up all the necessary files off each CD in order of CD 1,2,3 and that's all the changing you ever needed to do. But with Fedora it's like CD 1,2,1,2,1,2,1,2,3,2,3,2,3,1,3,1,3,1,3,1. and more!!!

Well, that shows how often I use Add/Remove Apps ;-)

Bugzilla is definitely now up - I've logged in to it successfully. You might want to check the config tools list to see if it's a well-known issue.

Cheers man