I decided to install Fedora Core 2 in place of the RedHat 9 I had been running. I ordered the CDs from CheapBytes, backed up my important files, booted from CD 1. Got through the initial screens (asking what type of install, disk partitioning, etc), formatted the drive, started installing the files.

Got into "Installing packages", when an error box popped up reading "ERROR INSTALLING PACKAGE: There was an error installing glibc-common-2.3.3-27. This can indicate media failure, lack of disk space, and/or hardware problems. This is a fatal error and your install will be aborted. Please verify your media and try your install again."

I did run disk verify on CD 1 (the one reporting the error) and it vrified just fine. In case it might be a hardware issue I replaced the hard drive witih a brand new one (60 GB, so space shouldn't be an issue), get the same error. Replaced the CD drive with a fairly new DVD/CD drive, same error.

Any ideas? I'd really like to get this machine back up again.

What a frustrating afternoon! After several hours of trying to figure out what could be wrong, it turned out to be a bad ribbon cable. Now it's installing just fine.

It does happen! Either a bad cable/wrong type of cable, of the cable was not making a solid connection. Had this happen a few times myself playing around in my system box.

Of course, the messages you got asked you to try the obvious...check the media. Then the next no-so-obvious...bad hardware. Well, really a hardware connection.

Frustrating, but nice work!

I ran into a similar problem installing packages with FC2 on a dual boot with XP. The first time it gave me an error message I stopped the install and checked the integrity of the media. Everything looked fine so I started the install again. Same problem. I stopped and started again but this time I told it to retry. Sometimes 2 or 3 times but if finally installed the package. This happened with 4 or 5 of the packages but in the end FC2 was installed and running fine.

Then I tried to boot into XP and received a ton of partition error messages. Unfortunately I screwed things up even further before I got a very helpful message from DapperDan regarding FC2/XP dual boot errors. I have reloaded XP (my backup HDD went bellyup at the same time) and will try the fix on an install tonight.