how to tell when biosboot partition is needed?

[Richard Neuboeck]

Hi List,

I'm in the same predicament as Steve. My manual test installs of
Fedora 17 result in msdos and gpt partition table labels. Since I'm
using kickstart and a pre install script to partition the disc I would
also like to find a way to determine if a biosboot partition is
necessary or not.

The only sure reason to install a biosboot partition I could find was
a disc >= 3TB.

The UEFI test system I'm using definitely has UEFI enabled and since
the disc has 3TB should use EFI. But I couldn't find efi in sysfs like
anaconda tries to do to determine if it's an EFI capable system.
However this system gets a gpt label in my tests. But I don't know how
anaconda comes to that conclusion.

So right now I'm only relying on the disk size to choose the partition
layout in my preinstall script.

Any pointers where I can find more details or information on how to
make an educated guess on how to partition would be very welcome.

Thanks!
Richard

On 09.06.12 01:00, Steve Rikli wrote:
> Is there some programmatic way within Kickstart %pre to determine
> if a "biosboot" partition is needed, or at least if it is an
> available option/fstype?
> 
> Like many folks, we create a "/tmp/partitions.inc" sort of
> %include file in %pre, to partition the disk.
> 
> Starting in Fedora16 a "part biosboot ..." partition is required, 
> and ideally we'd like to be able to use the same %pre script to 
> setup partitions on all the different Linux versions we need.
> 
> We would be okay with "wasting" 1MB and always creating a biosboot 
> partition for any Linux, but it's not a supported type prior to 
> Fedora16, so that isn't an option.
> 
> Thanks, sr.
> 
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