On Thu, 2006-05-04 at 11:23 -0500, Aleksandar Milivojevic wrote:
Quoting Johnny Hughes mailing-lists@hughesjr.com:
You shouldn't do an install in this manner, because it is broken ... however, you could choose to do it. Anaconda is flexible to allow you to do this ... it would not install ia-64 packages (for example) in this way, nor will it install x86_64 packages on an i386 install in this way.
What you are asking it to do is valid ... you can install i386 packages to x86_64 ... so the system assumes you know what you are doing.
I'm not really sure if this logic is good. If installation is done from "specially designed" x86_64 tree. Sure, fine, whatever. The user obviously knows what he is doing. However, if installation is attempted from pure i386 tree, I beleive it is better to complain (since in all probability, this is not what was intended). Especailly since it is trivial to check what tree is used (second and third line of .discinfo).
I agree that this is probably true. If there are only i386 packages, it is most likely an error on the part of the person doing the install.
Or alternatively, the installer should conclude intention was to install i386 distro (even if booted from x86_64 media) and configure things accordingly. If intention was to install mixed i386/x86_64 system (which I totally agree is perfectly legal), person installing it sure isn't going to point Anaconda to something that screams "I'm i386-only tree". She's going to point to something that says "I'm x86_64 tree", and than customize it by replacing/adding i386 components.
I do not disagree with you ... but anaconda doesn't normally validate the repo, it just installs stuff. If it can meet all it's dependencies, it is perfectly happy.
That might not be a good thing.
In all likelyhood, this type of installation will be encoutered only in this two cases:
- typo in ks.cfg (points to wrong tree)
- sysadmin really wants i386 installation, but doesn't have i386 boot CD
Also, the yum should really be fixed. If I have i386 package installed, and it detects x86_64 version of package is newer (but there is no corresponding newer i386 package available), it shouldn't install x86_64 package (since I know what I'm doing, right?). At least not if my kernel can't run x86_64 (it doesn't help that my hardware is x86_64).
For example, this happens with vim-minimal package. If you look into base repository, there's vim-minimal-6.3.046-0.40E.7.i386 and vim-minimal-6.3.046-0.40E.7.centos4.x86_64. Yum will decide the later is "newer" (because of centos4 string), pull it, and install it (overwriting, not replacing the i386 package).
You are correct ... that should not be an update for the i386 package and I can verify that is indeed doing that.
You are also correct that it installs an unusable system. If you try to install any x86_64 packages they fail ... as they need a basic set of x86_64 items already installed.
This is an issue that would have to be addressed upstream.