TrueCrypt on FC6 : Installation Problems

Anaconda bug had i586 kernel being installed on Dell 600m laptop, with uname -a mis-reporting an i686 installation.

i586 -> i686 kernel change required, then truecrypt modules on farm.repo work like magic.

When installing packages with kmods (e.g. the rt2500 and truecrypt drivers) you might run into trouble like this:

Transaction Check Error:   package kernel-2.6.18-1.2798.fc6 is already installed
file /boot/System.map-2.6.18-1.2798.fc6 from install of kernel-2.6.18-1.2798.fc6 conflicts with file from package kernel-2.6.18-1.2798.fc6
file /boot/config-2.6.18-1.2798.fc6 from install of kernel-2.6.18-1.2798.fc6 conflicts with file from package kernel-2.6.18-1.2798.fc6
file /boot/symvers-2.6.18-1.2798.fc6.gz from install of kernel-2.6.18-1.2798.fc6 conflicts with file from package kernel-2.6.18-1.2798.fc6
file /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.18-1.2798.fc6 from install of kernel-2.6.18-1.2798.fc6 conflicts with file from package kernel-2.6.18-1.2798.fc6

This is due to a bug in anaconda (the Fedora Core installer) that accidentally installed an i586 kernel on your i686 machine. Workaround is to switch to the i686 kernel and try again after a reboot.

Method 1

The fix shown on the farm.repo site was to swap out the i586 kernel for the i686 with yum, rather than rpm directly, and it worked just fine:

1. save /boot/grub/menu.lst
2. yum remove kernel kernel-devel
3. yum install kernel.i686 kernel-devel.i686
4. yum install (the list of a dozen odd i386 kernel depencies removed in step #1, such as "gnome-volume-manager" and "compiz")
5. reuse the saved menu.lst Method 2 (used sucessfully)

Install yumdownloader which is in the yum-utils package.

# yumdownloader kernel-2.6.18-1.2798.fc6.i686
# rpm -Uvh --replacefiles --replacepkgs kernel-2.6.18-1.2798.fc6.i686.rpm