Description of problem: I was sure this had been submitted sometime, but apparently it has not. During the install, the current way to idnetify a swap partition is to look for the swap "signature". All partitions with a "swap signature" are then selected as swap partitions for the install and will be formatted. Request: there should be an option to DEselect a swap partition. Example where this current situation is a problem: Use vmware to install a linux guest. The install will be a harddisk install. The running host system has a swap partition on the same physical disk as the partition holding the iso images. If I proceed, I just formatted the running host systems swap partition. Bang! There are other examples such as where you have disks physically shared between two separate hardware systems. In addition, see discussion on the fedora-test-list.
Ermm, your example seems very broken. Why are you putting the ISOs in a swap partition? The swap signature should only be there if it's an actual swap partition and not an ext[23] partition (which is what you should be putting ISOs on). I will turn off the forced formatting for FC2, though. It's just far too late to do that for this release -- I'm not entirely sure what other side effects could pop up and without another test release, there's no way to really be able to verify it to the extent that I'd want to.
OK, I was not clear so let me try again. I believe my example will apply to building a guest system under VMware or building a system on a drive which will then be removed and install on a separate (different) system. 1. The system will be installed on on VMware virtual drive (e.g., /dev/sda) -- this is one or more files on the real (host) system. That virtual drive will also have a swap partition. 2. I will be doing a harddisk install with the iso images in a partition in a real drive (e.g., /dev/hdb) on the host system. This drive also contains a swap partition which is in use by the host system. The install of the guest will also format the host's swap partition. I believe that there are other scenarios which involve building a linux system on a drive which is then installed on another (different) system without the second drive. Yet another example is where I build a minimu (emergency) system on a drive and I do not want it to depend on anything else except the absolute minimum. I know I can fix this after installation but would like to do it at install time. These may be some corner cases but they do exist in the real world. I am having a bit of difficulty seeing the reluctance of providing the option. BTW, my workaround for the VMware example cited above is to do an nfs install rather than a harddisk install.
FC 2 is fine with me since I do have my workaround. Some additional examples of where this option would be useful is where you have physically shared drives and some swap areas are in use by an additional system. BTW, the RFE is NOT to just don't format it ... don't USE it.
Some additional clarification ... For VMware to do the install of the guest it has to "see" both the virtual partition which only contains and "empty" virtual drive AND the full (real) partition which has the iso images partitions AND the swap partition used by the host system which is running VMware.
No longer auto-formatting. Not using isn't really sanely doable within the current interface :/