[GTALUG] Fedora Partitioning

[D. Hugh Redelmeier]

| From: Howard Gibson <hgibson at eol.ca>

|    Updating my desktop to Fedora_23 continues to be a challenge.  

There are two odd challenges that I remember with Fedora 23.  They can
be disconcerting but need not be fatal.

One has been true of Fedora installation for a while.  After you
select a disk, it analyzes it asynchronously so for a while you get a
diagnostic message that isn't true (I forget the details).  And it
doesn't tell you that it is still working on the problem.  Asynchrony, 
with consequences, but no indication, is a Bad Thing.

The second is
<https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1269298>
I hit it when installing with a USB ethernet connected.
I can dodge it by installing without the USB ethernet dongle.
See comment 17.
It is a simple fix but Fedora doesn't re-issue installation disks, even 
when they have errors.


| The other is that it gets confused by
|    I figured out how to connect to the network.

Other than what?

|  Now, it insists on a 
|    /boot partition separate from /home.  This appears to be a new 
|    feature.  I am trying to upgrade, rather than re-install everything.  
|    I don't recall how I managed to do this, but my root partition is 
|    /dev/sda1.  My other partitions are contained in the extended 
|    partition /dev/sda2.

I've not been forced to create a /boot.  But on an EFI system, you do
need /boot/efi filesystem.  That's a law-of-UEFI, not something
originating from Fedora.  I'm typing this on an F23 system with /boot
as a directory within / and /boot/efi as a (FAT) filesystem.

|    Does anybody know how I can use the Fedora installer to split 
|    /dev/sda1 into two partitions /dev/sda1 and /dev/sda6?. I tried 
|    deleting /, and creating the two new partitions, and it did not work.  

Should be as easy as pie.  Whether is the best thing to do is unclear
to me.

Alternatively, I often use a live F23 system, and run gparted to
adjust partitioning.  I don't remember if I have to install it ("dnf
install gparted").

NOTE: if you use gparted to resize an ntfs partition, immediately
reboot Windows.  It might find some damage and repair it.  If you
delay booting Windows until after a few more steps, sometimes Windows
won't boot.

|    Alternately, is there a way to use my root partition for booting?
| 
|    I have looked at my partition table using fdisk.  It looks like I can 
|    delete /dev/sda1 and create the two new partitions sda1 and sda6.  
|    Definitely, this destroys my current setup, and my new install had 
|    damn well better work.  Partitions sda1 and sda6 will be next to each 
|    other, followed by sda2.  Has anybody done this safely?

You might be able to get gparted to shrink /dev/sda1, preserving
what's in it.  But I don't comprehend what you are trying to do.

|    I have a Ubuntu DVD here.  When I "Try Ubuntu", I was able to make it 
|    claim that my network was connected, but I was unable to ping the 
|    machine, or connect the browser to http://www.google.com.  Is this 
|    how Ubuntu behaves in demo mode?  The Ubuntu installer seems to 
|    over-write boot.  If I play with it, I am forced to re-install 
|    something.

Normally Ubutu Live DVD's are very slick and automatic.  You could
debug the problem: after all, you have a full-featured Linux already
working for you.  I admit that networking is both intricate and
complicated and can be difficult to debug.

|    Fedora_20 was a dead cinch to install.  How did everything get so 
|    complicated?

It should be incrementally better.