Thanks to everyone who replied. I should use my brains before posting to a mailing list :-) Right after I posted my request, I remembered the text install. I seem to recall some earlier RedHat install experience where graphical install would hang and the text-mode install was broken in some other way, partitioning didn't work quite right if I recall. And I do need a bit of custom partitioning, because I want to dual-boot between the new Fedora (on a dedicated partition) and my old system. So I did a fresh backup of my most important data, crossed my fingers, felt a bit like speeding without seatbelts on an unknown winding road (not knowing what comes next in the newt-based installer) and to my great surprise I was able to affect all the partitioning decisions, including the mountpoints and including where the bootloader installs. The text install seems to work fine - it didn't allow me to select individual packages, but did copy packages based by my "category selections" and the resulting system has managed to boot. Well - almost. The system defaults to runlevel 5, and boots into X. And voila, the X-based "initial setup wizard" hangs exactly the same way as the installer! I've managed to get into the machine via SSH. Fortunately remote root login is allowed, so I didn't have to resort to a boot CD. The trouble is, that I do need workable X. I'm gonna have to take a better look where the gremlins are hiding. If I can't get rid of the bug, I'll have to use some other hardware or some other distro for my testbed. Frank Rysanek > The obvious quick hint is to use a text install, if you don't *need* to > use a graphical one.
