Bug 55469

also, when I remove the --onprimary option from ks.cfg, the install proceeds
properly, except for a mouse probing problem, but that is a different story.

This is really an anaconda bug instead of a ksconfig bug.  ksconfig is writing
out a valid file according to the kickstart documentation.  This is a dupe of
bug #55373

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 55373 ***

*** Bug 55613 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

*sigh*.  Ok, I can confirm that --onpart has been removed from kickstart.  With
7.2, we switched the disk partitioning backend from libfdisk to parted.  Parted
lacks the ability to specify specific partitions the way that libfdisk did, but
the benefits that parted provides us outweighed the negatives.  

The problem is that the removal was not well communicated, therefore the
kickstart docs still mention --onprimary and ksconfig still lets the user call
that flag.  The docs have been updated to describe the new behavior, and I will
have to remove the --onprimary code from ksconfig.

I'm not happy with this, but I don't see anything else I can do at the moment.

Correction....--onprimary has been removed...not --onpart.

I am not happy with this either.  :-(

The --onprimary tag is the only way to slice up the disk with ks to put the 
partitions exactly the way you want them.  I am not sure how --asprimary 
decides where to put partitions, but it doesn't do it based on the order listed 
in the kickstart file.  I like to have swap at the beginning of the disk, but 
asprimary always puts it as the last partition.

How does RH now recommend to create partitions for something like:
1 /    2000M
2 swap 1000M
3 /var 2000M
4 /usr 2000M

Is it possible to format the disk during %pre and then use --onpart to put the 
partitions in the right place?  I do not really care how it is done, but need 
the ability to do everything from kickstart.

I could live with --onprimary if I could see a concrete example of
manually partitioning the disks in a %pre section.

However, The example would need to demonstrate how to:
a) determine which disk is the boot disk /dev/hda or /dev/sda.
   I would want an example that could be used on either an IDE
   or a SCSI based system without making changes to the ks file.
b) How do I clear all existing partitions from the drive.
   (I guess you could delete partitions 1, 2, 3 and 4 during the fdisk)
c) How would you detect an unitialized partition and then initialize it
   in case its a shiny new (or currupted) disk.

I tried doing this myself but my fdisk /dev/hda << EOF doesn't seem to
work because it doesn't seem to grok all the end-of-lines as "Enter"
key inputs.

Yes, it is possible to fdisk the drive during %pre and then use --onpart to
specify the correct partition(s), although it is not pretty.  I'll try to put
together an example %pre that demonstrates this.

For example, to create a 400MB swap as /dev/hda1 and a 3000MB / as /dev/hda2,
you could do something like this:

%pre
mknod /tmp/hda
fdisk /tmp/hda << EOF
n
p
1
+400M
t
1
82
n
p
2
+3000M
t
2
83
p
w
EOF



Each line is essentially a command to fdisk.  If you think of the key sequence
necessary to set up your partitions in fdisk, and then put each command on a
separate line, this should do the trick.

Then, you would use --onpart to specify /dev/hda1 for your swap and /dev/hda2
for your root.  This is terribly inelegant, but it should work.

the script above does not seem to work for me.  I get "unable to find 
partition /hda/dev2 to use for /".

here is the script I used.

mknod /tmp/hda
fdisk /tmp/hda << EOF
n
p
2
+2000M
t
2
83
n
p
3
+100M
t
3
82
p
w
EOF

Hmm...I don't know what the problem is.  It seems like your script should work
to me...

At any rate, I have built a new version of ksconfig in Rawhide that doesn't
allow the creation of --onprimary partitions since that option is no longer
available.

It is ksconfig-1.9.9-1.noarch.rpm