I'm totally Linux newb--I'd love to get off Windows....I've had FC5 with the 2.6.15-1.2054_FC5 kernel installed for a couple days and been playing around. I've been having problems installing ndiswrapper and several other things, so I figured I'd upgrade my kernel (downloading a newer version isn't really an option on dialup, and honestly, I hate to reinstall Ubuntu at this point).

I ran uname -rm and got, 2.6.15-1.2054_FC5 i686, so I downloaded kernel-2.6.17-1.2187_FC5.i686.rpm from the fedora repo. Then I ran the following

sudo rpm -ivh kernel-2.6.17-1.2187_FC5.i686.rpm

It hashed out 100% of Preparing, and 1:kernel and then it hung. I left it overnight just in case it was thinking. When I came back 10 hours later, it was at the same spot, so I hit ctrl+c. It exited with the following error:

error: %post(kernel-2.6.17-1.2187_FC5.i686) scriptlet failed, signal 2

So I figure it didn't install. But just to be sure, I reboot. It definately didn't load itself into grub--I don't have an option to boot into it. But if I try to install it again, it says it's already installed, and sure enough, when I run

yum list installed kernel

it show up:

kernel.i686 2.6.17-1.2187_FC5 installed
kernel.i686 2.6.15-1.2054_FC5 installed

So....where am I at? Do I just need to add the boot option manually? Or am I missing something or did something go wrong? Thanks ya'll!

Looks like the install faltered before it could write an entry in grub configuration,you can try
sudo rpm -ivh --force kernel-2.6.17-1.2187_FC5.i686.rpm

Run the command ' rpm -qa | grep kernel ' to see what packages are installed.
Have you setup sudo?
If not ' su - ' as root and run the command without sudo and see what it does.

Now for ndiswrapper to install from source you will need the kernel-devel rpm that matches the kernel you are trying to install.
You can find an rpm of the ndiswrapper that should match your from here. http://www.atrpms.net/ and will not require you to have the kernel-devel installed.
If you upgrade the kernel you need to find a new rpm ndiswrapper for matching kernel or install the kernel-devel that matches the kernel version and build from source.

Also check out this think on many things one can setup on FC. http://stanton-finley.net/fedora_cor...ion_notes.html

Brian

I'll give that a try.

rpm -qa | grep kernel returns

kernel-devel-2.6.15-1.2054_FC5
kernel-module-ntfs-2.6.15-1.2054_FC5-2.1.26-0.rr.10.0
kernel-2.6.17-1.2187_FC5
kernel-2.6.15-1.2054_FC5

which makes sense--the kernel and headers for my old kernel, plus the ntfs module...and then the new one. I suppose that's the part I don't get, hehehe.

Do I need to remove the new kernel before I try the --force?

Thanks!

No, you need not remove the new kernel before using --force
The idea of using the force option is to force the OS to reinstall kernel, without the force option it will simply terminate the install process with a msg that pkg is already installed

gotcha. Ok, I tried forcing it. Looks like it worked--it didn't hang like the last one, at least.

I'll be rebooting now and be back w/ some feedback.

sure enough--that did it. thanks.

as far as wireless goes, what's the consensus nowadays: ndiswrapper or the bcm43xx driver? I've gotten the bcm43xx driver to turn the light on my wireless on (it's a Broadcom in an Acer laptop), but I can't get it to find the AP that I know is there (I heard rumors that the driver in the newer kernel is a bit better). Any advice about which one to pursue?