I recently encountered (and resolved!) an error upgrading a machine to Fedora 7. I reasoned it was worth sharing, so here you go:

Early in the process, an Anaconda screen prompted me to decide between a full install (to overwrite the existing FC6) or an upgrade. After I chose “upgrade,” the installer choked with this stack trace:


Traceback (most recent call first):
File “/usr/lib/anaconda/iw/upgrade_bootloader_gui.py”, line 78, in _newToLibata
if l.strip()[0] == “#”:
File “/usr/lib/anaconda/iw/upgrade_bootloader_gui.py”, line 90, in getScreen
newToLibata = self._newToLibata(anaconda.rootPath)
File “/usr/lib/anaconda/gui.py”, line 1131, in setScreen
new_screen = self.currentWindow.getScreen(anaconda)
File “/usr/lib/anaconda/gui.py”, line 1042, in nextClicked
self.setScreen ()
IndexError: string index out of range


I dug deeper in the stack trace and found the culprit: Anaconda didn’t like that the system’s /etc/modprobe.conf began with comment lines. I removed those, restarted the upgrade, and it went off without a hitch.

Hopefully this will spare you a headache or two.

I have established a companion website for the book at

http://www.KickstartBook.net/

It’s a holdover site for now. Over time I will post book-related matters there, instead of here.

Ask and ye shall receive: Managing RPM-Based Systems with Kickstart and Yum is now available for your reading enjoyment.

Get your copy before they sell out!

Well, it’s a PDF, so O’Reilly technically has unlimited supply… but you know what I mean.

I’d like to take a brief moment to thank chromatic, my editor at O’Reilly, and my reviewers Derek Ashmore and Derek Torres. If there’s anything you like in the book, chances are it was their suggestion. All typos are mine.

Well, only one surprise…
Don’t let the dormant website fool you. ExMachinaTech is not dead, nor is novi. I’ve been working on a related project and wanted to make sure it was a solid deal before revealing it here:

Together with the good folks at O’Reilly, I’m going to publish a title on Kickstart and yum. You may recall, I wrote a series of articles on this very topic some time ago.  I now get to expand on and update that material, all so you folks can get a handy guide to your favorite tools.

The work is now in progress, though the publication date is still a little hazy. More news as it’s available.

Get it while it’s hot! The crew at Dr Dobb’s Journal (DDJ) have published my latest article, “APR Networking and the Reactor Pattern” (November 2006 issue).

It’s a tour of networking code in the Apache Portable Runtime (APR) library. I use the classic Reactor pattern as my example.

To celebrate, I have finally added the long-promised list of my published articles to the website. Enjoy.