upgrading dual boot fedora - partitions

[Tim]

On Sat, 2008-02-02 at 16:31 -0800, tns1 wrote:
> I just thought an upgrade might be safer than a fresh install.

Why?

Leaving "safeness" aside, an update often entails trying to sort out the
mess of old things that clash with new things, that didn't get
updated/replaced/moved.

> When I started to 'upgrade', I got a warning about /dev/hda6 not being 
> mountable and how I might have problems if I continued, so I quit.

You'd have to say why it couldn't be mounted.  Drive errors being one
reason that you'd need to check on before continuing.  File system
errors are something you can deal with by just wiping off the partition
and installing anew.

> I added volume labels in XP for partition 1 & 6, but it when I booted in 
> FC3, it didn't make any difference as far as what $blkid and fdisk 
> report. I guess volume labels are not the same as partition labels.

Yes/no...  They're similar things, but how XP and EXT3 go about doing
their business is very different, anyway.

> So really three questions:
> How would I add partition labels if I really needed to?

You can use e2label or tune2fs.

> Do I really need to?

Yes, mostly...  Fedora uses labels for mounting things.  You can
manually configure things to use the devices, as prior releases did, but
you'd have to manually tweak things.

> Why doesn't the installer report the same sizes as fdisk?

Don't know that one.  Partitioning seems to be a black art, especially
seeing how half the tools disagree with each other.  Best advice is
usually to use just one tool for partitioning, not a cluster of
different ones.

But if you're concerned about the installer futzing up partitions, first
do backups before proceeding.  Second, you can re-partition, and
reformat (if you need) your drive before installing.  I'd suggest that
if you don't reformat, you delete old files and directories, at least.
Then during the install, choose manual partitioning, choose the
partitions that you want to install to, and deselect options to reformat
them.

-- 
(This computer runs FC7, my others run FC4, FC5 & FC6, in case that's
 important to the thread.)

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