Subtle corruption almost EVERYWHERE. How to reinstall?
 

I had been suffering strange random problems for months on a Fedora Core 3 system, and so I decided to scrub the whole installation and started over with FC5. I was freaking out as I realized that I had exchanged one set of random problems for another. After months of trying almost everything else, I figured out that I had a bad DIMM, that where a few bits were stuck “off”(sometimes). I also realized that this DIMM had been bad during installation, so that any file written to my drives MAY have been corrupted.
Even now, I cannot use python reliably, because it gives segmentation faults. This means I can’t use yum to update anything. It took me forever to configure all my apps and services on this box, so I don’t want to reformat “/” again.

So I‘d like to “reinstall” my current system, starting with python, rpm and yum.
How can I do this?

Thanks!

Charlweed

For as long as FC has been around, the one thing that is consistent is that reviews of this distro are all over the place. This should tell you something. Although there are success stories, I personally have had little or no luck with FC2, FC4 and FC5. Some of the problems have been listed on the Redhat bugsite SINCE 1999 !!

I can only recommend against upgrading and go with a fresh install. I f you feel that something is "not right", why not try another distro.

good luck

Don't rule out the possibility of other hardware issues. Fedora may have its problems, but I have not seen anything like what you reported.

do you have some tools for memory test, HD test, etc.?

to "re-install" you start with the OS---which of course includes many of the apps you mention.

If you suspect issues with the harddrive, you can "wipe" it before the next install.

Hardware WAS bad. Now I want to replace all the binaries.
 

Thanks,
Only 2 24 hour dedicated memory tests showed the bad DIMM, but it was conclusive.
So now, what I would LIKE, is to replace all the suspect binaries in my system, with clean copies from a new DVD.

My problem is that when I try "reinstall" from a DVD, it immediately returns becuse everything is already "up to date"

What kind of RPM encantation can I type that will "force" a reinstallation?

Thanks again!

Just re-install!!

Boot from the CD/DVD and simply install the distro again. The problem in your situation is how to know what all is bad--it may be easier in the long run to simply re-install the whole mess.

Backup important files first.

But there ARE options to rpm and yum to force re-install of individual packages....
man yum, man rpm for details

This leads me to question if you can do something similar on Fedora that you can do on a Debian based system..

on debian you can query the installed package base to a list, go to another system then insert that list and update to duplicate the package set between machines..

rpm -qa > packagelist.txt will generate that list on Fedora but how could you use that information with something like Kixstart or another method to 're-install' a duplicate system software wise..

I'm sure there is a way to do it.. I'm just not familiar with how.. and of course you would still need to manually port over any config file changes you have made.

You can use the --force option to reinstall the same package.

You may have better luck reinstalling smaller related groups at a time then reinstalling every package. If this is a fresh install, re-installing the system from scratch may be the best way (and quickest) to go.

You might also consider using rpm's verify option. Some packages may be OK and don't need to be re-installed.

Thanks!
That looks promising.