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Monday 5 January 2015

Pane is dead

I was setting up a couple of new servers. Usually, I just put the Fedora DVD in a DVD drive answer a few simple questions and it goes on, no problems. But lately I've been getting a problem.

This might be caused by the very old computers I'm using - I bought a batch of motherboards some years ago, and they were just right for what I wanted for a server, and I've been using them ever since.

The problem I get, is when I try to install Linux, Anaconda (the Linux installer) reports "Pane is dead" and dies.

The cure for this took me a few minutes to find, and it turns out to be quite simple. You can install Linux in text mode; when the opening screen comes up you hit the "esc" key, and at the prompt, you type "linux text". Now you install linux in text mode, and that works. But it's a bit tedious compared with graphics mode. So there's a better way.

You type "linux vnc".

That hums to itself for a bit, and then gives you a code, like 10.23.45.67:1

What's happened here, is it got an IP address from a DHCP server, and it's giving you its address. So you go to another computer running Linux, and run vnc, and when the box pops up to ask the code, you give it 10.23.45.67:1 (or whatever you were given by the computer you're installing).

After that, it's just like installing in graphics mode - all very easy and convenient.

But what I don't understand, is why it can do that, but not use graphics mode on the computer you're installing. Because it used to.

1 comment:

  1. Well if you don't know, what chance have the rest of us got!! :)

    Happy New Year Doc

    ReplyDelete