partitioning problems when trying to install Fedora Core 3

D. Hugh Redelmeier hugh-pmF8o41NoarQT0dZR+AlfA at public.gmane.org
Fri Feb 4 02:33:01 UTC 2005


| From: Simon Tonekham <stonekham14-bJEeYj9oJeDQT0dZR+AlfA at public.gmane.org>

This whole thread is very sadly funny.

I just isn't very hard to install Fedora.  But like any "user friendly"
thing, when it goes off the rails, you are sometimes left to fend
without tools or concepts.

I assume you are trying Core 3, the latest, but it hardly matters.
The fact that you didn't mention the version shows that you don't
really know how to report problems.

The steps of a GUI installation are not easily described in text.
Hence your request for somebody to come to help you is not actually a
bad idea.  If you are truly in the weeds, you might need someone
onsite to figure out your problem.  But it really should not have to
come to that.

On top of this, I suspect none of the folks offering advice actually
runs Fedora.  They do understand the concepts, but you seem to have a
problem at a shallower level.

I use Fedora, but I don't even remember what the choices are at the
beginning: they are so obvious to me that they are not memorable.

I always ask for a "custom" installation.  I think that may be the
path through which manual partitioning is done.  I still use the GUI
for partitioning, but I make the decisions.  Perhaps you are breaking
one of the rules that is obvious to me.

- you need to specify the mount point of each partition you create
  (except for the swap partition)

- I usually create 3 partitions on a new machine:
  8G	/	for everything except users files
  >1G	/home	for users' home directories
  1G	swap	for swapping
 (I have specified reasonably generous sizes)

- a server installation might be better if it had more distinct
  partitions (for example, /tmp, /var, ...).

- On my FC3 x86_64 installation, I selected most packages and this
  fits in 5.7G.  This is *not* "everything" which includes tonnes of
  stuff for natural languages that I cannot read or write.  Note that
  x86_64 uses more space than i386 (two versions of many libraries,
  less dense object code).

- I often leave unused a partition big enough for /.  When I upgrade,
  I install to this new partition, leaving my old / intact.  Thus, if
  my new installation doesn't work, I can go back.

| "Unsatisfied Partition request New part request - mountpoint: none uniqueID:
| 27 type: physical volume (LVM) format: 1 badblocks: none device: none
| drive:['hdb'] primary: none size:0 grow: 1 maxsize: none start: none end: none
| migrate: none origfstype: none"

Is this how the message is presented, or have you reformatted it to
make it even more obscure?

Formatted more readably:

    Unsatisfied Partition request
    New part request -
    mountpoint: none
    uniqueID: 27
    type: physical volume (LVM)
    format: 1
    badblocks: none
    device: none
    drive:['hdb']
    primary: none
    size: 0
    grow: 1
    maxsize: none
    start: none
    end: none
    migrate: none
    origfstype: none

I have no idea what tool prints this kind of message.  What is a
"device"?

As Taavi mentioned, the mountpoint looks wrong -- you want to have at
least /.  Perhaps this is a side-effect of LVM -- I have no experience
of that.

| I also got this error message as well:
| 
| "The following errors occured with your partitioning. You have not defined a
| root (/) partition wh ich is required for installation of Fedora Core to
| continue. This can happen if there is not enough space on your hard drive(s)
| for the installation. You can choose a different automatic partiton option or
| click "back" to select manual partitioning."

Perhaps Fedora doesn't like not having / on hda.  Some systems can
only boot hda.  That is a foolish reason because all that matters is
on which drive the the boot sector lives, but Fedora might have some
such restriction built in.  Note: this is a superstitions
leap-in-the-dark guess.

| In my opinion, the manual partitioning is a very painful, tedious and
| meticular (sorry if i misspelled the word) process on establishing Fedora.

If you think partitioning is hard, you are in for an unpleasant
surprise when you get to other tasks on a computer.
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