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) Some scholars are like donkeys, they merely carry a lot of books. -- Folk saying -- fedora-list mailing list fedora-list@xxxxxxxxxx To unsubscribe: https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-list Guidelines: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Communicate/MailingListGuidelines
