Bug 249399
Summary: | inability to install to PATA HD with >15 partitions not addressed | ||
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Product: | [Fedora] Fedora Documentation | Reporter: | Felix Miata <mrmazda> |
Component: | install-guide | Assignee: | Paul W. Frields <stickster> |
Status: | CLOSED RAWHIDE | QA Contact: | Paul W. Frields <stickster> |
Severity: | medium | Docs Contact: | |
Priority: | low | ||
Version: | devel | ||
Target Milestone: | --- | ||
Target Release: | --- | ||
Hardware: | All | ||
OS: | Linux | ||
Whiteboard: | |||
Fixed In Version: | Doc Type: | Bug Fix | |
Doc Text: | Story Points: | --- | |
Clone Of: | Environment: | ||
Last Closed: | 2007-09-15 14:24:25 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
Felix Miata
2007-07-24 13:18:00 UTC
It does appear that the Fedora team do not wish to address this, either to say FO or that it is an issue. I've added a note at http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/YumUpgradeFaq that addresses this problem, but I'm fairly certain this is a corner case. In addition, for some time now Fedora has been using and recommending LVM, since it allows the system owner to sidestep these kinds of problems fairly easily. (In reply to comment #2) >for some time now Fedora has been using and recommending LVM, since it allows >the system owner to sidestep these kinds of problems fairly easily. That's a perfectly fine recommendation only for those using Fedora 7 exclusively. It stinks when the system is multiboot with non-Linux OS installations as well as legacy Linux installations, any or all of which may be incompatible with Linux LVM. FYI, both SUSE and Mandriva in current release and development versions permit access to all PATA partitions, regardless of number. Other distributions may not be carrying the new libata stack as Fedora does, which emulates PATA drives as SCSI. All SCSI drives have been limited in the kernel to 15 partitions throughout the 2.6 branch (and possibly before), and patching that behavior is not something I think kernel devs are going to want to do, since it would require fairly extensive changes. Furthermore, LVM use isn't limited to Fedora 7; it's been in Fedora for quite a long time, and support for LVM is in most other mainline distros. Linux LVM support is also available for other operating systems such as Windows. SCSI has always been subject to the 15 partition limit. It's only a relatively recent kernel architecture change that imposed SCSI's 15 partition upon PATA in place of its traditional limit of 63. This bug is about documenting how to do what's possible to do in Fedora now, not whether what it is doing is right or wrong or the same or not as its competition. Right now, that one line on http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/YumUpgradeFaq that says "IDE hard disks with more than 15 partitions are not supported in Fedora 7." is the only apparent doc reference anywhere to the effect that upgrading to or installing F7 on systems with >15 PATA partitions is impossible. If that's all there is, it isn't enough. It's a minimalist and inadequate way of saying, sorry, you'll need to switch to a competing distro or use FC6 or add another HD if you want to preserve access to and/or leave undisturbed your existing legacy partitioning. Official docs, including the README and Installation Guide, need to address the issue also. This limitation does not exist in current and next versions of major distros Mandriva and SUSE, even though both in latest incarnations do use the same basic libata SCSI emulation system as Fedora. Each simply provides some optional means to not load libata and instead load an appropriate legacy IDE driver. IIRC, this also applied at least recently to current Debian and *buntu 7.04 (I haven't tested those 2 in several months). SUSE is apparently on the verge of a solution that extends access to up to 63 partitions to SATA as well as to PATA: https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=218122 I've added a section in the release notes for F8 to cover this as well. If you're interested in seeing a change in the functionality, please open a new bug against e.g. mkinitrd. |