Bug 186114

Summary:	Instructions for preparing USB boot media can cause loss of hard drive partition table
Product:	[Fedora] Fedora Documentation	Reporter:	Robin Green <greenrd>
Component:	install-guide	Assignee:	Stuart Ellis <stuart>
Status:	CLOSED RAWHIDE	QA Contact:	Paul W. Frields <stickster>
Severity:	high	Docs Contact:
Priority:	medium
Version:	devel	CC:	stickster
Target Milestone:	---
Target Release:	---
Hardware:	All
OS:	Linux
URL:	http://fedora.redhat.com/docs/fedora-install-guide-en/fc5/sn-preparing-media.html#sn-preparing-usb-media
Whiteboard:
Fixed In Version:		Doc Type:	Bug Fix
Doc Text:		Story Points:	---
Clone Of:		Environment:
Last Closed:	2006-04-30 18:25:04 UTC	Type:	---
Regression:	---	Mount Type:	---
Documentation:	---	CRM:
Verified Versions:		Category:	---
oVirt Team:	---	RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host:
Cloudforms Team:	---	Target Upstream Version:
Embargoed:

Description Robin Green 2006-03-21 18:47:29 UTC

Description of problem:   
At   
http://fedora.redhat.com/docs/fedora-install-guide-en/fc5/sn-preparing-media.html#sn-preparing-usb-media  
the instructions just tell you to type:  
  
dd if=diskboot.img of=/dev/sda  
  
But this could blow away your hard drive partition table (and more besides) if  
you have a SCSI hard drive!!!!  
  
Instead, the docs should explain how to find out the device node of your USB 
device (e.g. look in dmesg). 
 
Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable):   
FC5   
   
How reproducible:   
Haven't tried  
   
Steps to Reproduce:   
(Don't actually do this!)  
1. On a machine with a SCSI hard drive, follow the instructions  
     
Actual results:   
Partition table on SCSI hard drive overwritten   
   
Expected results:   
Boot image written to USB hard drive

Comment 1 Stuart Ellis 2006-04-30 18:25:04 UTC

Thanks - I've amended the CVS version with a procedure for finding out the
correct device node. The HAL device mounting in FC5 doesn't seem to log to
/var/log/dmesg, so I've specified "ls /proc/mounts".

Comment 2 Robin Green 2006-04-30 21:06:24 UTC

(In reply to comment #1)
> The HAL device mounting in FC5 doesn't seem to log to
> /var/log/dmesg

Note that /var/log/dmesg should really be called /var/log/boot-dmesg - it is
only written once per session, on bootup. Everything that happens after bootup
only appears in the output of the dmesg command, but not in /var/log/dmesg.

Comment 3 Stuart Ellis 2006-04-30 22:13:19 UTC

OK, I've now revised the instructions to use the dmesg command.

Thanks again.