[GTALUG] Fedora Partitioning

[Howard Gibson]

On Mon, 15 Feb 2016 21:30:55 -0500 (EST)
"D. Hugh Redelmeier" <hugh at mimosa.com> wrote:

> | 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.

   Success!

   I read up on Fedora and /boot partitions.  There was a lot of stuff on MBR versus GPT partitions.  From the Fedora DVD installation, I logged in as root and I tried "fdisk -l".  This revealed that my 2TB drive with my OS and working partitions, is "Disklabel type: dos".  My 500GB Archive drive is "Disklabel type: dos".  My new 4TB backup drive is "Disklabel type: gpt".

   I unplugged my 4TB drive, and the install went fine.  

   Install done, I rebooted, I got the network working and I went "dnf -y update". With the update done, my network stopped working.  The network tool claimed it was connecting.  From dmesg, I could see that it could see my router's MAC address.  Eventually, I set my IPv4 method to "Automatic".  "Link-local" was what worked when I did the install.

   I will post all of this to my website in a couple of days.

-- 
Howard Gibson 
hgibson at eol.ca
howard.gibson at teledyneoptech.com 
jhowardgibson at gmail.com
http://home.eol.ca/~hgibson