LiveCD wiping root partition?

[Michel Salim]

On 01/08/07, Douglas McClendon <dmc.fedora at filteredperception.org> wrote:
>
> Douglas McClendon wrote:
> > Michel Salim wrote:
> >> I just did a clean install of Fedora 7 from the live CD onto my laptop,
> >> which previously had a Fedora install upgraded from one of the F7 test
> >> releases, partitioned as suggested by anaconda (LVM, one swap
> partition,
> >> everything else under '/')
> >>
> >> When reinstalling, I kept the partition layout and specifically told
> >> Anaconda *not* to reformat / (having booted in rescue mode beforehand,
> >> and
> >> removing everything but /home). Anaconda gave a warning that the
> leftover
> >> files might interfere with the installed system, which gave the
> >> impression
> >> that those files won't actually be removed during installation.
> >
> > I don't remember the specific warning, but if it is not clearly
> > indicating that unselecting the format option on '/' is not allowed,
> > then that is a bug that should be fixed either with better user
> > messages, or alternate installation mechanisms.
>
> WOW.  I was wrong.  There is NO such message.  That is a horrible bug.  I
> may
> try to check to see if it's still in the latest anaconda, and provide some
> sort
> of simple patch later today.
>
> Also, to answer your question more thoroughly than my first reply-  Yes,
> after
> the dd, if there is a seperate /usr or other partitions, files are then
> copied
> from / to there.  This is all very related to my turboLiveInst patch which
> I
> recently posted to livecd-list and anaconda-devel.


Uh. Does it ensure that the root partition is at least 4.0 GB in size, or
will it just try to dd the image regardless? I've had esoteric partitioning
in the past, with small /, and large /usr and /opt partitions.

I'm surprised I don't remember hearing about this bug before.  I had
> personally
> run into the same warning you saw, but that is just a general warning that
> has
> nothing to do with the livecd installer case specifically, and the livecd
> installer will stupidly let you just march along with the / fs not
> scheduled for
> formatting, even though it is going to anyway.


I guess we really need to have different types of updates, where major and
potentially data-loss-causing changes need to be more exhaustively tested.
No one probably bothered testing a live CD install to a non-formatted
partition before..

Still waiting for the dd process to finish backing up the partition to an
external drive; will report if anything is salvageable. Wishing I did not
blow away the Windows partition, would have made recovery much easier.

While we're on the subject of making Anaconda changes, how about putting
/home on a separate partition? The BSDs traditionally do that, I think.

Thanks,

-- 
Michel
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