Bug 748156

Description of problem:
It appears that the "Create custom layout" screen enforces a descending order sort on size for primary partitions.  I do not know if this change occurred in Fedora 15 or Fedora 16 (I generally skip the odd-numbered Fedora installs and install even-numbered Fedora installs around Thanksgiving, but I've purchased new hardware for the first time in five years, so I thought I'd do a test install of the beta to see how well it runs on Sandy Bridge).

I generally use two partitions - a / partition for the OS, home dirs, etc., and a /data partition that I use for a digital image archive/repository, backing up my Windows machine, etc.  For simplicities sake, I've historically made both partitions primary partitions.  I'm on a 160 GB SSD, so my allocation is roughly 60GB to / and 85GB to /data (that leaves some headspace incase I need to copy the raw partitions to a slightly smaller 160GB drive).  In Fedora 14, there was no problem creating that configuration.  In Fedora 16 beta, it seems to enforce a descending sort order on size for the primary partitions!  For aesthetic reasons, I'd prefer to have / be sda1 and /data be sda2.


Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable):  16 beta.


How reproducible:  Always


Steps to Reproduce:
1. Get to the "Create custom layout" screen during install.
2. Select the free space under sda and click Create
3. "Create Storage" dialog: Select "Standard Partition" and click "Create"
4. "Add Partition" dialog:
  Mount Point: /
  Size (MB): 61440
  Force to be a primary partition: Check
  Click "OK"
5. Observe / is on sda1
6. Select the free space under sda and click Create
7. "Create Storage" dialog: Select "Standard Partition" and click "Create"
8. "Add Partition" dialog:
  Mount Point: /data
  Size (MB): 87040
  Force to be a primary partition: Check
  Click "OK"
9. Observe / is on sda2 and /data is on sda1!

  
Actual results:

Observe / is on sda2 and /data is on sda1!


Expected results:

Observe / is on sda1 and /data is on sda2!

Additional info:

At first I thought it might be that the second primary created always gets the first position, but then I tried reversing the creation order and that had no impact.  Then I tried drive size, and sure enough, if I used 61439 for /data it would be second.  I can work around the issue by specifying that /data is not a primary partition, because logical partitions always follow primary partitions, but the same descending order sort on partition size appears to happen within the logical partition list as well.

There may be valid design reasons for this behavior, but I submit that most users who are on the create custom layout screen have specific desires as to where their partitions will end up (if only for aesthetic reasons or simplicity of remembering which is which), and the old behavior of creating the partitions in othe order the user created them is probably desirable.