Hide Forgot
Description of problem: If the user goes past DiskDruid partitioning phase up to Grub menu editing phase, then goes back to DiskDruid to change partition scheme, under certain circumstances the partition->mount point mappings will get messed up. Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): Redhat Linux 9 text installer How reproducible: Reproducible 100%, and in my case, I've lost over 1 hour during my RHCE exam because of this (I had to manually setup RAID and move data between filesystems after installation because they were messed up). Steps to Reproduce: 1. Boot from RH 9 installation CD1 2. Use "linux text" installation 3. Choose "Personal Desktop" installtion type (it doesn't actually matter) 4. Partition using Disk Druid Craete the following partitions in the following order: 256 MB mounted on /boot 1024 MB mounted on / 4096 mounted on /usr 512 swap all remaining size mounted on /home Disk druid will create the following mappings: 256 MB hda1 -> /boot 4096 MB hda2 -> /usr 1024 MB hda3 -> / all remaining hda4 -> Extended partition and then on the extended partition: 512 MB hda5 -> swap all remaining hda6 -> /home 5. Go further, choose GRUB boot loader 6. Move further through boot loader configuration up to the list of bootloader entries. 7. Now imagine this: you can see that the root device is /dev/hda3: Default Boot label Device * Red Hat Linux /dev/hda3 Suppose that you want to place it on a lower partition. You do the following: 8. Go back to disk druid 9. Edit hda3 (mapped to /boot) 10. Turn on the option "Force to be a primary partition" and confirm 11. Observe how the mapping has chanbged to this: 256 MB hda1 -> /boot 1024 MB hda2 -> / 4096 MB hda3 -> /usr all remaining hda4 -> Extended partition and then on the extended partition: 512 MB hda5 -> swap all remaining hda6 -> /home Particularly, note that "/usr" has still 4096MB in size and "/" has still 1024MB. 12. Go further through bootloader configuration, without changing anything. Notice that GRUB's root device is still incorrectly at an old setting of "/dev/hda3"! Don't change that, though, and go further. 13. Place GRUB in MBR (/dev/hda) 14. Use whatever Network, Firewall, Language, Timezone, setting you like. 15. Provide root user's password 16. Accept the default packages selection, it doesn't matter. 17. Begin installation 18. Wait for the formatting filesystems phase to end 19. Use Alt-F2 to switch to the terminal console 20. Issue "df -h" to check filesystem mappings and sizes. Actual results: "/usr" and "/" filesystems are switched and don't correspond to what Disk Druid was showing: "/" is still on hda3 "/usr" is still on hda2 but: "/" on hda3 has the size meant for "/usr", 4096MB! "/usr" on hda2 has the size meant for "/", 1024MB! In this case the installation will fail due to lack of space for packages. In my case, on RHCE exam, the situation was worse because usr was switched with another filesystem which was big enough, so the install proceeded, but afterwards the sizes were wrong Expected results: 1. The filesystems are created according to the table shown by Disk Druid insteller page 2. Grub configurator detects relocation of the root filesystem and reflects those changes on the last "Grub configuration" installer page. Additional info: none
Does this still happen with Fedora Core 1? I seem to remember fixing it there...
Nope, I've just tested with Fedora Core 1 installer. Fedora installer does exactly the same thing: Initially places filesystems in order "/boot", "/usr", "/"; When I go to GRUB boot menu editor (where I see root device on hda3), then go back to disk druid and force "/" to be a primary partition, the order changes to "/boot", "/", "/usr". But on the GRUB menu editor root is still visible as hda3, not hda2. When I go further and start package installation, I can see that the filesystems were mounted in old order (hda1 -> "/boot", hda2 -> "/usr", hda3 -> "/"), and the sizes use the new order (hda1 -> 256, hda2 -> 1024, hda3 -> 4096). So in short the problem is: Disk Druid has reordered size specifications, but not mount points after I had clicked "Force primary partition". Which leaves me with filesystems having different sizes and order than I've specified in Disk Druid.
BTW, I've passed the exam anyway :) But the score was only 88%...
Fixed in CVS