Time to upgrade FC8->FC10

[Gene Heskett]

On Wednesday 11 February 2009, Paul W. Frields wrote:
>On Wed, Feb 11, 2009 at 09:31:58AM -0500, Gene Heskett wrote:
>> So, I'll ask it again:  Preupgrade wants to download the install image to
>> the /boot partition.  Unforch the F8 installer refuses to allow a /boot
>> partition of over 199 megs, and we all know that image has to be bigger
>> than that.  So the question remains: How do I tell preupgrade to use /tmp,
>> or even / as a scratchpad location for this install image download?
>
>I'm not aware of any such limit, and asked a few knowledgeable folks
>who weren't either.  What I suspect happened is you tried to create a
>/boot partition in the existing space between the beginning of your
>hard disk, and an existing partition (probably the extended area,
>maybe swap) after it that you weren't blowing away.

The drive was at that point clean when it failed the first time, then I went 
back before I started the install again, used fdisk to make  a 500MB 1st 
partition, a 2gb swap next so it was on the outside fast part of the drive, 
and several more partition of various sizes cuz I like /var on its own, /root 
on its own/ and /home on its own, but when I restarted the installer and it 
put it clear at the end of the disk and kept it there regardless.  WTH is it 
with this that it also insists that /root cannot be a separate partition, but 
must be a subdir of /?  Total nonsense, that you cannot even setup a drive 
the way you want it, skip that part of the install & just go do it.

I have never figured out why you people hate fdisk so much.  Back when you 
called it disk druid or some such it was a PIMA, and while the face is now a 
lot prettier, it is just as terminally broken in its heart as ever.

>There are a limit 
>to what even good heuristics will do to address this problem, and
>having played with the installers for other distros, I don't think
>it's unique to Fedora.

Probably not and will remain so until all are using fdisk or (g)parted to do 
the disk configuration.

>You can use parted -- or better yet, one of its GUI cousins -- to deal
>with this problem, but it's not a simple exercise by any means.  If
>you're reading this in an interface that uses a fixed-width font, this
>diagram might make sense.  Otherwise, it might not:

Perfect here.
>
>.-- beginning of disk                                end of disk --.
>V                                                                  V
>
>|=====|==========|=================================================|
>
> /boot   swap      extended partition (maybe LVM?)
>200 MB   1 GB      (rest of disk)
> sda1    sda2      sda3
>
>Some of that 200 MB is taken up by the kernels, initial ramdisks, etc.
>your system has installed.  You could remove extra kernels to make
>more space; each set of files takes up somewhere in the neighborhood
>of 8-10 MB, I believe.  Then you could try preupgrade.  If you tend to
>keep lots of kernels that could be a problem.  I thought that the
>amount of data that preupgrade downloads is under 150 MB, but not
>much.
>
>If you reinstalled and chose to reuse that extended area and swap
>as-is, you ended up with limited choices for resizing /boot.

This time it will be on a 400GB deathstar.  Distro yet TBD, but likely ubuntu.

>On the other hand, if you did a whole bunch of partition-moving voodoo
>-- and I promise you it's not for the faint of heart, I've done it
>myself, only after a full backup -- you *might* be able to end up with
>
>this:
>|-------|==========|===============================================|
>
> empty    swap     extended partition
> 300 MB
>
>Now you've got extra space and when you run the installer, you can
>keep the existing partitions and write a bigger /boot as well.

And I just got finished half an hour ago, moving my complete amanda vtape 
archive to a new 1TB drive, so yes, you could say I'm reasonably familiar 
with such, as long as the supplied tools don't override what I want.  In the 
F8 case for both installs, they did, either resetting my choices to what they 
wanted, or by refusing to recognize them at all.

If I was to reinstall on this drive, I'd just move the end of boot/swap border 
in about a half a gig.

>Really, in the interest of time and hair-pulling, in these cases I
>simply tend to back up data and reinstall, setting up the partitions
>in a more useful way for future-proofing.  Right now, I'd go for about
>250-300 MB for /boot to ensure that future preupgrades fly without a
>hitch.

And all you have to do is get past the 199meg limit for /boot that the F8 
installer insisted on.  Use fdisk to set it up bigger, and the installer 
would not recognize it.

-- 
Cheers, Gene
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
 soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author)
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