RC4 will not install using FTP

[Gavin Atkinson]

On Wed, 2005-05-04 at 12:29 +0100, Pete French wrote:
> > I haven't been able to reproduce this yet.  I've successfully done an
> > FTP install both from an initial floppy boot and from an initial disc1
> > CD boot.  So it's not a "totally generic" problem, it might have
> > something to do with the pathway you are following through sysinstall.
> 
> Possibly. I had to take a slightly odd path through sysinstall, as I'll
> explain below.
> 
> > Was this a brand new install or were you installing over top of a
> > pre-existing install?  If the latter did you recycle the existing disk
> > partitions or have it wipe out everything and re-do them from scratch?
> 
> Old install, I kept the slice layout, but wiped all the partitions and
> created new (different) ones. 
> 
> Other proble was that the first time through sysinstall it cannot resolve any
> named from the nameserver. I then hitt Ctrl-C, go back to the start and
> type all the same details in again. The second time round it works fine.
> 
> I dont know if that is likely to affect the install at all ? Could it
> be having problems due to having the original partitions already mounted
> from the first attempt maybe ?

Bingo!  Restarting sysinstall always causes this problem.  It's a well
known problem with several open PRs (see for example bin/38854,
bin/42162 and bin/45565 - all dating back to 2002).  It's 100%
recreateable by restarting sysinstall realatively early in the install
procedure, and I've never had it happen without doing so.

It's one of these bugs that I keep tripping up on and was always
planning to sit down, set up a PXE boot environment and sort it and
other sysinstall problems, but can always seem to find other things to
do :(

Gavin