CentOS - May 2007 - Centos 5 text install doesnt install all of GNOME

I did find this out in another message here and they are right.  This is 
a missing piece (one of many!) in the text install.

Even if you select Gnome as your workstation WIndows environment, not 
all of Gnome gets in.  You still have to do:

yum groupinstall "GNOME Desktop Environment"


Then edit /etc/inittab file to reflect as shown below

id:5:initdefault:
   ^
This number should be 5.

Robert Moskowitz wrote:
> I did find this out in another message here and they are right.  This is 
> a missing piece (one of many!) in the text install.
> 
One bit of info that needs clearing up here, did you start a text 
install by yourself or did the system fallback to text mode ? If the 
installer drops down to using only Text mode, there will be a reason 
mentioned in the anaconda log file - look there.

If the installer makes an assumption that it cant run the GUI mode in a 
reasonable fashion, then it does the safest thing, and sets the machine 
to boot into text mode post-install.

- KB
-- 
Karanbir Singh : http://www.karan.org/ : 2522219 at icq

Karanbir Singh wrote:
> Robert Moskowitz wrote:
>> I did find this out in another message here and they are right.  This 
>> is a missing piece (one of many!) in the text install.
>>
>
> One bit of info that needs clearing up here, did you start a text 
> install by yourself or did the system fallback to text mode ? If the 
> installer drops down to using only Text mode, there will be a reason 
> mentioned in the anaconda log file - look there.
>
> If the installer makes an assumption that it cant run the GUI mode in 
> a reasonable fashion, then it does the safest thing, and sets the 
> machine to boot into text mode post-install.
The installer assumed that it could not run the GUI mode as it cam up 
with 232Mb memory (24Mb used by video card).

And I know that it would come up in 'init 3 mode', it was just that I 
was SURE that I selected the GNOME package from the customize package 
installation dialog, and it was not on my system after the install.  I 
had do grab it separately via yum groupinstall.

Howover, I hosed up somehow later with yumex doing updates, and watched 
everything being removed!  So I had to redo the install.

This time I paid careful attention to the package install dialog, and 
GNOME environment was installed.  All I had to do was change inittab to 
start at 5 instead of 3.

So I don't know.  I am unlikely to be doing another Centos 5 install on 
a system with less than 256Mb of usable ram...

Karanbir Singh wrote:
> Robert Moskowitz wrote:
>> The installer assumed that it could not run the GUI mode as it cam up 
>> with 232Mb memory (24Mb used by video card).
>
> This number itself is fairly open to argument. Is 256 megs of usable 
> ram really a hard limit practically ? I think its the best compromise 
> for the situation that we are in - and the anaconda+yum combo 
> definitely needs working to try and optimise the amount of ram it uses 
> at install time - dont think anyone is going to deny that. 
I have already done one isntall on a Compaq SFF that has 256Mb memory.  
It went well, I did not feel I had any challenges with the install.  As 
compared to the Compaq SFF with 512Mb.

It would be nice if we could at least have an override to 'try it 
anyway'.  I mean what could go wrong with only 232Mb???  ;)

Johnny Hughes wrote:
> On Thu, 2007-05-03 at 20:48 -0400, Robert Moskowitz wrote:
>   
>> Karanbir Singh wrote:
>>     
>>> Robert Moskowitz wrote:
>>>       
>>>> The installer assumed that it could not run the GUI mode as it
cam up
>>>> with 232Mb memory (24Mb used by video card).
>>>>         
>>> This number itself is fairly open to argument. Is 256 megs of
usable
>>> ram really a hard limit practically ? I think its the best
compromise
>>> for the situation that we are in - and the anaconda+yum combo 
>>> definitely needs working to try and optimise the amount of ram it
uses
>>> at install time - dont think anyone is going to deny that. 
>>>       
>> I have already done one isntall on a Compaq SFF that has 256Mb memory.
>> It went well, I did not feel I had any challenges with the install.  As
>> compared to the Compaq SFF with 512Mb.
>>
>> It would be nice if we could at least have an override to 'try it 
>> anyway'.  I mean what could go wrong with only 232Mb???  ;)
>>
>>     
>
> The installer can freeze in the middle of installing ... I have even
> seen it happen on > 256mb of RAM, and I think that 384mb should be the
> anaconda GUI lower limit, not 256mb for stable installs.
>   
Well actually, I did get a freeze, in the text install, the first try.  
At about 51% installed, it locked.  Wouldn't respond to a ping.  But I 
looked at the DHCP server, and it did not show that address being 
assigned anymore, so I strongly suspect that something was wrong with 
lease allocations and the notebook 'lost' its IP address so of course it
could not ftp anymore.
> We will stick with what RH puts out, but believe me, you do not want to
> try to do a GUI install with < 256 mb RAM.
Well it would be nice to see some more work on the text install!  LVM 
functions and the ability to deselect portions of a group.

But I suspect that there are more important things that need attention.

Keep up the great work!