DIsk Druid Bugs in installation of latest Fedora

[pking123 at sympatico.ca]

> On Sat, May 14, 2005 at 09:42:04AM -0400, pking123 at sympatico.ca wrote:

> So..... actually, the installer *does* give you the option of using
> fdisk, via the alternate console....

No, because it ignores everything you do in that console. The mounts only work while 
you are in the console, but I can't stay in that console forever. I need to reboot at 
some point and use what I installed.

> 
> > The deal with the install program is that it refused to go ahead
> > unless there was a /home partition somewhere (there should be no
> > reason for this). With nothing entered for /home, it first installed
> > in the / partition, and /usr/local/ could also be dealt with. The
> > problem was that
> 
> You're right -- I don't think there's any such limitation in the code,
> so that's pretty weird. What version is this? And what do you mean by
> "it first installed in the / partition"? You *will* need to have a /
> partition, of course.

The version of Fedora is Version 3 Core, which is the latest version, downloaded 
from fedora.redhat.com. I can't tell you what version of Anaconda was being used, 
but I am sure it is on the website.

I mean that the home directory installed on to / despite my not mentioning anything 
about where to put "home". I wanted to create /home myself and mount the volume 
later through /etc/fstab, but Fedora doesn't seem to have a way of editing /etc/fstab 
in a way that the changes will stick.

> 
> 
> > /etc/mtab and /etc/fstab were not set up so I could just edit it to
> > put the right information in, so I was stuck, since there appeared
> > to be no documentation on how to set it up. It appears that once you
> > use DD, everything is written in stone and there is no turning back.
> 
> Disk Druid isn't smart enough to have any particular way of writing
> anything in stone, so I don't think that's it.

So the problem is either with Anaconda or whatever subsystem that appears to have 
control over /etc/fstab. I recall that the top of /etc/fstab had a warning not to edit the 
file directly, but I could not find any other way to set things up.

> 
> > So, I tried the installation again. What it decided then to do is
> > wipe out the partition table after only instructing it to mount the
> > partitions and not reformat them (it didn't ask before doing so) and
> > set up new partitions in their place.
> > 
> > What I want to know is, why insist on ONLY using DD for configuring
> > the HDs? And why was /etc/fstab and /etc/mtab mucked with so much
> > and not documented?
> 
> This is a strange, strange question. It's like saying "Why insist on
> only using Anaconda to install Fedora?" No one's *insisting* -- it's
> just the tool that's provided.
> 

I don't think it is a strange question at all. Why insist on using Anaconda at all? Why 
should there not be a way to set up the system on a lower level? Historically, (at least 
on other distros) DD was an option, not just the only tool provided. Isn't this like 
putting all your eggs in one basket? Linux was supposed to be more robust than that. 

The last distro I know of to put all their eggs in one basket (read: installation 
program) was Corel Linux, another disaster. But at least under Corel I could tweak 
things in the  console, and those changes would stick.

Also, my basic question remains: how are partitions supposed to be set up if I can't 
touch /etc/fstab?

Paul