Disk Druid - Fedora flame #1

[Jeff Vian]

On Wed, 2005-01-19 at 17:13 -0500, Gene Heskett wrote:
> On Wednesday 19 January 2005 13:54, Les Mikesell wrote:
> >On Wed, 2005-01-19 at 11:19, Craig White wrote:
> >> ---
> >>
> >> > and 2) what it does show you is to be carved in stone, not
> >> > re-arranged willy-nilly after you've clicked on the next button.
> >>
> >> ---
> >> it doesn't
> >> ---
> >
> >No, he's right on this one.  Try creating a layout with /boot first,
> >then /, then swap, then /home where DD creates all the partitions.
> >Every time I've tried without fdisk'ing the partitions first, DD
> >re-arranges the layout into some other order.  That is especially
> >stupid in the case where you try to make an identical layout on
> >the next drive and RAID1 mirror the partitions, then DD moves them
> >so they end up paired with something on the same drive.  FC3 has
> >some new options for mirrors so it may not be as difficult as
> > before, but we still need some way to nail down a layout in DD that
> > will be repeatable in the resulting kickstart file.
> 
> And I'm down there working on it right now, having put a used 46GB WD 
> drive in as /dev/hdb, and the first real problem is that DD will not 
> allow me to make a /root partition, claiming it must be a directory 
> on /.
> 
> With all due respect, thats bullshit. I will NEVER partition a drive 
> and put /root as a subdir on /.  I don't have such an arrangment in 
> place on any linux install I have, won't tolerate it.  Its senseless 
> to put your most private business as nothing more secure than a 
> directory on /.  End of discussion IMNSHO.  What I do as root, is not 
> any of the semi-public /'s business, none nada zip.
> 
> So how do I proceed?
> 
> As it exists right now, and I'm waiting for some learned answers:
> 
> /dev/hdb1= primary /boot = 100M
> /dev/hdb2= primary /dos  = 50M
> /dev/hdb3= primary /root = 4GB But %$#@*& DD won't let me name it 
> '/root', I'm gonna have to do it by hand.
> /dev/hdb4= extended, remainder of a 46GB disk
> /dev/hdb5= extended /home = 4GB
> /dev/hdb6= extended /swap = 1GB
> /dev/hdb7= extended /var  = 3GB
> /dev/hdb8= extended / rest of disk, about 33GB
> 
> /dev/hda is hopefully not to be touched, this is a new install.
> 
> FWIW, this time on the final release of FC3, I can get a shell with 
> ctl+alt+F2, so that at least is working now.  So I'm going to use 
> that shell to format, install journalling, and label those 
> partitions, and then see if I can get around DD and actually continue 
> a fresh install on this disk.
> 

/root must be part of / filesystem for the install and initial boot
process. / is the first partition mounted and initially mounts ro then
after the boot gets past a certain point it then gets remounted as rw.
Since the install and normal boots proceed as root there must be a home
directory available for the boot process.

Once the system has remounted the / filesystem in rw mode, then you can
mount an additional partition over the basic /root, but that is your
problem with /root and trying to specify that as a separate partition
during the install.