Bug 770240

Summary: Losing /home is too easy
Product: [Fedora] Fedora Reporter: Samium Gromoff <_deepfire>
Component: anacondaAssignee: Anaconda Maintenance Team <anaconda-maint-list>
Status: CLOSED RAWHIDE QA Contact: Fedora Extras Quality Assurance <extras-qa>
Severity: high Docs Contact:
Priority: unspecified    
Version: 16CC: anaconda-maint-list, jonathan, vanmeeuwen+fedora
Target Milestone: ---   
Target Release: ---   
Hardware: All   
OS: Linux   
Whiteboard:
Fixed In Version: Doc Type: Bug Fix
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Clone Of: Environment:
Last Closed: 2012-10-05 15:35:19 UTC Type: ---
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oVirt Team: --- RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host:
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Description Samium Gromoff 2011-12-24 18:22:29 UTC
Description of problem:

The problem has many faces.

One of them, is that F16 won't detect F15 installations in all cases, and
therefore won't provide an upgrade option, but the user who did read the
Installation Guide expects such an option to be present, and chooses the closest
installation scenario resembling an upgrade.

Another face is that the "Use All Space" and "Replace Existing Linux System(s)"
will kill /home partitions, with loud but, critically, only vague warnings
about "Linux partitions", which can be plausibly interpreted as just system but
not /home partitions.

The end result is that it is far too easy to hurt oneself.

(Besides -- how large is the percentage of use-cases when one wants to wipe
old /home data?  I'm sure it's non-negligible, but it's over-represented,
for sure.)

Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable):
F16, and I hope, any earlier versions (so it's not a regression...)


How reproducible:  Every time.


Steps to Reproduce:

1. Proceed with Fedora installation
2. Exercise a slightly inadequate amount of attention
3. ..proceed with formatting your /home
  

Actual results:  Precious data is lost.


Expected results:

Fedora makes best efforts to detect and preserve /home partitions:
  - by default, opt to move old content of /home subdirectories to either:
    - per-user ~/Old Home, or somesuch (should it be an XDG directory?)
    - global /home/.old
  - in the case the user explicitly (rather than implicitly, as is current)
    decides to erase his old /home, ask him specifically about each detected
    /home directory, presenting him with their content in a file manager.

Additional info:

Comment 1 Chris Lumens 2012-10-05 15:35:19 UTC
(1) anaconda will not be doing the upgrades anymore, some preupgrade-like process will be handling all that for us.  So there's no need for that detection code.

(2) The five options autopart screen is now gone.

(3) Making room for new installations has you go through your partitions much more carefully now, meaning accidentally erasing /home like this should be more difficult.