[clue-tech] Error installing Suse 10

[Matt Gushee]

Matt Atkins wrote:

> I am still trying to get my first Linux machine off the ground.  I am 
> installing Suse 10 on a PC built a few years back.  Fairly early in the 
> installation, I get the following error message:
> 
> Installation of package patch-2.5.9-148.i586 failed.

Well, that's not a very helpful error message, is it? No indication at 
all of the cause of the failure. However, I can make a couple of 
observations here:

  * patch is a very standard development utility which is installed on
    most Linux boxes and has minimal dependencies.

  * In light of the above, if the failure were caused by a defective
    package or a bug in the package manager--given how common the patch
    utility is--the odds are close to 100% that SuSE (or any mainstream
    Linux distribution) would correct the error long before the release
    ever got out the door.

  * I don't use SuSE, so I can't say what patch depends on on a SuSE box,
    but on my system it depends only on ed and glibc; ed, in turn,
    depends only on glibc. Now, glibc is the foundation for just about
    everything on your system, and ed is another small, basic,
    more-or-less-universal package that is unlikely to fail.

So, what could be wrong? The following possibilities occur to me:

  * A defective installation CD

  * Defective hardware

  * Lack of disk space ... but what do you mean by "built a few years
    back?" You shouldn't need more than 2-3 gigs, so it would have to be
    a pretty old machine indeed to have too small a hard disk--unless
    you've split it up into small partitions.

  * You aren't by any chance trying to second-guess the installer, are
    you? E.g. trying to do everything manually without being sure of what
    you're doing? ... well, I did that the first time I installed Linux.
    It was ... interesting.

-- 
Matt Gushee
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