Be careful when trying to install CentOS 4.3. I was running CentOS 4.2 just fine and now I've lost it all. All my work down the digital drain... Reading the fantastic Howto (Falko, R.E.S.P.E.C.T.) and try to install CentOS to my server, the installation will make a hard stop and freezes at "formatting boot file system" If you, like me, had a previous OS installed, you'll lose it all. On the CentOS forum more people are experiencing the same problems on different types of systems and configurations. It seems to be some sort of bug. I think it probebly has to do something with LVM or RAID... but I'm not an expert! I've already tried to do manual partioning, leaving the LVM out and just configure a /boot, / and swap. Still, no dice. I freezes again and again. Checking the dvd or cd media doesn't resolve anything either! My system is a Supermicro 1010S-T server with a H8SSL-i board, AMD Opteron 170 2Ghz 2MB Dual Core and 2GB RAM (4 x Apacer 512MB). Datastorage is covered by 2 Seagate 80GB 7200rpm SATA hdd connected to a 3Ware 8006 SATA Raid 0,1 card. Also got a Supermicro IPMI card installed.
I know this doesn't help you anymore, but it's a widely spread misconception that most people try to install the newest software on their systems (sometimes even production systems), even if the old software is working perfect, and risk the loss of their systems. Never touch a running system. It doesn't matter if you're running CentOS 4.2 or 4.3, Fedora 4 or 5, etc. What is important is that the system is working reliably, and not that you have the newest software. You should use Debian, and you'd learn that stability is worth far more than bleeding-edge software.
I did know that... but somehow, I forgot! And yes, It was a production machine that I was planning to place in to a datacentre this week. I guess this is not going to happen after all! Anyway, I hope I've reached some people not to make the same mistake as I did. I've already reported this to the bug tracker at CentOS. Hopefully they'll find a solution, coss I'm totally in to CentOS. Switching to a different distro is not an option for me right now, because all my logs and howto's are based on CentOS. I was planning to publish a Howto on your website for CentOS 4.2... but you guys beat me to it!
