Booting Fedora-12 from hard disk, again, again

[Rick Stevens]

On 12/23/2009 06:02 AM, Timothy Murphy wrote:
> jackson byers wrote:
>
>>> There's no actual restriction on just where the ISO image itself is, so
>>> long as you can feed the full path to Anaconda by specifying the device
>>> and directory on that device (see
>>> http://docs.fedoraproject.org/install-guide/f12/en-US/html/s1-
> begininstall-hd-x86.html
>>> for details).
>>
>> Agreed, and that is the best reference
>
> I was looking again at this reference,
> and I really don't think it is very good,
> or likely to be helpful to someone trying to boot from hard disk.
>
> In the first place, I would have thought that almost anyone doing this
> would want to (or need to) avoid CDs or DVDs altogether,
> by abstracting vmlinuz, initrd.img and the images directory
> from the ISO file,
> and adding a stanza to grub.conf to boot from these.

All those do is give you enough of a system to boot and run the 
installer.  They do NOT include the items necessary to install Fedora.
For that you need the Packages directory.

> There are no instructions for doing this, as far as I can see.
> The implication seems to be that the user is running a Fedora CD or DVD,
> and then wants to install from hard disk,
> which seems bizarre to me.

Not at all.  CDs and DVDs are much slower than hard drives and are
subject to all the possible errors inherent with non-contact, removable
media (scratches, dirt, etc.).

> If you can boot from CD or DVD, why not install that way?
>
> Actually, the whole Installation Guide, while beautifully produced
> and full of interesting information,
> strikes me as more or less useless for anyone actually wanting
> to install Fedora.
> I get the impression the authors have never put themselves
> in the position of a likely reader of the Guide,
> who is almost certainly asking,
> "I want to install Fedora. What should I do?"

The portions of the manual dealing with network or hard disk installs
are intended for more experienced users.  The vast majority of newbies
will simply burn the ISO image to a CD or DVD and boot that.  Anaconda
is pretty simple from there.

Even at that, a lot of newbies burn the actual ISO file to a disc
(ending up with a disc with one file on it), when they're supposed to
use the ISO file as a "disk image" to burn the disc.

If you can find a way to make computer software installation absolutely
foolproof, yet accessible to everyone regardless of skill level or
experience, then PATENT IT QUICKLY!  You'll make a mint!

"Where the hell's the 'any' key?  I've looked and looked and can't find
it!"
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- Rick Stevens, Systems Engineer                      ricks at nerd.com -
- AIM/Skype: therps2        ICQ: 22643734            Yahoo: origrps2 -
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-                   To err is human, to moo bovine.                  -
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